


Cops and Robbers

by Authoressinhiding



Series: Synchronicity-Verse [4]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Authoressinhiding/pseuds/Authoressinhiding
Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester were dead - until they weren't, and every news station was blasting twenty-four hour coverage of their new killing spree. And what the hell, Hotch wanted to know, was an escaped murderer from California doing with them?Multi-fandom crossover (SPN/Criminal Minds/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel) set in the same universe as Synchronicity. Takes place during SPN season 7.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! I tried a new thing and actually wrote the whole story before posting any of it! (Which usually only happens for oneshots with me). This is a BtVS/SPN/Criminal Minds crossover, set during season 7 of SPN. It expands on chapters 117 and 118 of Synchronicity, so if bits of the first two chapters look familiar, that's why. Updates will be every Friday.
> 
> Disclaimer: Anything recognizable belongs to Warner Brothers, Joss Whedon, Eric Kripke, CBS, and most certainly not me. I'm just taking it all out for a joyride.

* * *

**September 11th, 2012, Cleveland, Ohio, 3:15 p.m.**

"Miss Viglione?"

Becka Viglione, mechanical engineer, Vampire Slayer, and all-around competent woman, glanced up from the spreadsheet open on her desktop. "What is it, Abigail?" she asked her newest secretarial hire.

It had only been a week and a half, but she was hoping this one would work out. The last secretary had quit, and the one before had been promoted to senior executive assistant to one of the engineering firm's named partners. Becka had her fingers crossed that this time, the third time, would be the charm.

The angular redhead in a pair of too-tall heels and a neatly tailored pencil skirt pointed towards the black phone sitting on Becka's heavy oaken desk. "There's a call for you. Came in on the main office line. I patched it through."

"Thanks," said the brunette engineer, and she picked up the receiver. "Hi, you've reached Rebecka Viglione at Robinson & Cruz. How can I help you?"

"Hey, Becks," came a familiar voice, its usual friendliness flavored with a touch more urgency than usual.

The Slayer nearly dropped the phone in surprise. "Sam?" she hissed into the mouthpiece. "You're calling me at work? What, is the sky falling or something?"

"Cool it, Chicken Little," barked a second voice, this one deeper and gruffer than the other. "We've got a project for you."

Becka recovered her equilibrium. "Hi, Dean. Nice to hear from you. What's the project?"

"Two things," continued the hunter in a clipped tone. "Check the news. And have Faith give us a call on a secure line. New number: seven eight five, five five five, zero one two eight."

Mildly confused by the request, the Slayer pointed out, "Why don't you call her yourself? It wouldn't be international or anything. She's in San Francisco this week."

"It's better this way," Sam cut in before his brother could say something antagonistic. "Trust us. You'll see when you watch the news."

"Just have her call me, okay?" Dean's audible irritation was beginning to mount.

"Okay. Everything alright in Winchester-land?"

The only response she got was a terse, "Check the news," and then the line went dead.

What in the seven hells had that been about? Becka stared at her spreadsheets without really seeing them for a minute and a half, and then she launched a new SearchTheWeb hunt while dialing Faith.

"Hey," the older woman answered on the fourth ring, panting and short of breath. "Keep it quick. Kinda got my hands full at the moment."

"Holy sh-t," Becka breathed as she pulled up CNN on her computer. "Faith, have you been watching the TV in the last couple of days?"

Something roared in the background of the call, and the rhythmic sound of footsteps increased in speed. "No time," Faith said hurriedly. "Infestation of Cantonese Fook Beasts near the Golden Gate Bridge. Hell of a mess."

"Faith!" came the faint shout from a voice that sounded suspiciously like Buffy.

"I see it!" the woman called back. "Becks, if there's an emergency, tell me now."

The engineer rushed to answer, "No emergency," she said, speaking so quickly that her words nearly tumbled into not another. "Just hop on CNN as soon as you finish with your Fook Beast. And Dean wants you to call him. New number. I'll text it to you."

"Great," panted Faith "Thanks. Gotta run."

After listening to the dial tone for a long moment, the brunette Slayer slowly replaced the phone receiver into its cradle, still gazing at her computer, where two very familiar faces were holding up a bank.

"SERIAL KILLER BROTHERS STRIKE AGAIN IN WISCONSIN," read the chyron as it crawled across the screen. "THIRD HIT THIS WEEK – CAN THE FEDS CATCH THE WINCHESTERS?"

"She's not gonna like this," Becka muttered to herself, unable to tear her eyes away from the bank robbery. "Not gonna like this at all."

* * *

**September 12th, 2012, Pueblo, Colorado, 6:30 p.m.**

When the call finally came in from an untraceable number twenty-four hours later, Dean answered it, his fingers crossed that it would be the Slayer. Faith Lehane didn't disappoint, snarling out her questions without giving him a chance to say hello.

"What the hell is going on? I know better than to think those goons are you and Jolly Green. You two've got better sense than that. That what a Leviathan looks like when it wants to be pretty?"

The hunter's hands relaxed around the steering wheel of the Pontiac Acadian that he had picked up shortly after leaving Frank's place. Life got easier when he didn't have to convince everyone that he wasn't actually a serial killer.

"Hole in one," he confirmed, tapping at his phone screen and setting the call to speaker. "Apparently they got our hair out of some shower drain . . . and now they're mass-shooting their way around the country. We've sky-rocketed to number two and three on the FBI's Most Wanted List."

"FBI's finally developing some taste, then. How'd you figure all this out?"

"Bobby's got one of the slimy suckers out in Whitefish. He's asking him questions."

Faith snorted. "Nice euphemism, Sam. Your source tell you anything else interesting?"

"Nah. But we know where they're headed next." The younger hunter began filling her in on the Leviathans' pattern. "They're going to all the places Dean and I first went when we were looking for Dad. Jericho, Blackwater Ridge, Manitoc, St. Louis . . . Next up's Ankeny in Iowa."

"We still don't have a good way to kill the damn things," griped Dean, "but Bobby's been, uh, experimenting -"

"I'm sure he has," Faith muttered in an undertone. She liked Bobby Singer, even liked his grungy hats and his curt manner, and that liking did not stop when she considered the imaginative methods that probably comprised his 'experimentations'.

"Yeah." The hunter couldn't help but snicker. "Well, turns out that decapitating the bastards slows 'em down for a bit. Doesn't kill them, but it slows them down."

"Let me guess," ventured the Slayer contemplatively. "It's even better if you put miles between the bodies and the heads?"

"That's what we're thinking, too," concurred Sam. "Haven't tried it out just yet, though."

"So you're headed to Iowa to cut the heads off of your evil twins?"

Dean exchanged amused glances with his brother and then returned his eyes to the road. "Pretty much."

The Slayer chuckled. "Can a girl tag along?"

"The more the merrier. If you can fly into Des Moines, we'll pick you up first thing in the morning. Right, Sam?"

"Hang on," Sam said slowly. "Dean, they just released the video from that diner in St. Louis on CNN."

"Damnit, Connor's had the best food in all of Missouri. Now I'm never gonna be able to go back in."

"There's something else." Sam was not interested in his brother's burger woes. "Dean, it wasn't just the two of them back in Connor's. They had help. Pull over."

"_What_?" said Faith and Dean in unison.

"Pull over," Sam repeated, more firmly. "You need to watch this. Faith, if you've got Internet, you should check the video out, too."

Grumbling all the while, the older hunter zig-zagged his way across two lanes and brought the Acadian to a shuddering halt on the highway shoulder. "This had better be good," he warned his brother.

Sam shushed him. "Just watch."

The video itself was of poor quality, and the audio track had not been included with it, but Dean didn't need sound to realize what had thrown Sam into a hissy fit. Sure enough, there was his brother's doppelgänger mowing down booths of diner patrons with a semi-automatic. And there was the creature that looked like him but wasn't him, filming the whole thing while he massacred his half of the restaurant.

But there was someone else, too. Someone he recognized in a gut-wrenching split second. A thin woman, dressed all in black, her brown eyes cold, her scarlet-lipped smile feral. As the thirty second clip rushed to its end, the woman wrapped her arms around the Dean-that-wasn't-Dean, and the two creatures kissed.

A new caption spilled its way across the bottom of the video. BUCK AND CLYDE FIND THEIR BONNIE: MYSTERY WOMAN JOINS WINCHESTER MURDER SPREE.

"Frak," Dean swore.

"Frak," whispered the Slayer a half-second later. "I saw the video."

"Looks like we're not the only ones whose hair the Leviathans got ahold of." Dean ran a hand across his face, grateful that Sam had pushed him into stopping the car.

"You probably want to forget about the plane idea. They'll have you identified in a couple of hours, tops."

It was never that easy to dissuade the Slayer. "I can charter a private, meet you in Des Moines still."

"You can afford that?" wondered Sam incredulously.

"Not me," Faith scoffed. "Buffy's super-rich boyfriend can, though. And since I just saved his scrawny ass from getting chomped on by a Fook Beast, he owes me one."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, these guys are playing hardball."

Dean resisted the urge to smack his stupid little brother upside the head. Challenging the Slayer only made her more committed to risky ideas, not less. Sam knew that.

"They're stealing my face, Samantha. Not exactly something a girl can forgive. Plus, she's doing my eyeliner all wrong. I'll see you in Iowa."

* * *

**September 12th, 2012, Washington, D.C., 8:45 p.m.**

Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner was finally sitting comfortably behind his desk after a very long day. He and the team had been off the grid for the last few days, catching up on a series of hostage situation training in services at Quantico. Hotch was trying nobly to finish his paperwork before heading out, and there were only six forms and a twenty-minute drive between him and a hot shower.

He scanned the next sheet of paper in front of him – a list of which agents were responsible for covering the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays – and blinked heavily as the words blurred in front of him. Maybe he would only finish half of his paperwork. The rest of it could probably wait until morning.

There came a knock at his door, and Hotchner looked up to see Special Agents Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss hovering in his doorway, their faces anxious and concerned.

"What is it?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and scrawling his approving signature across the bottom of the holiday work assignments document.

The agents exchanged a glance with one another, then Prentiss frowned and said, "Sir, have you – did you see the news?"

"No," he replied slowly. "I'm guessing that I should have?"

Agent Morgan nodded. "You, uh, you probably want to come into the conference room for this."

"What is it?" Hotchner repeated himself. Rising to his feet, he abandoned the small stack of forms. Whatever this was, Morgan's tone sounded urgent.

They were out of his office, walking quickly along the hall to the bullpen and the conference room before Morgan answered, "Winchesters."

The name rang at least a score of bells. Hotchner winced. This was not the kind of complication that he wanted to be dealing with tonight, not when he had been so close to sleep. "I thought – aren't they dead?"

"Supposed to be," Prentiss cut in as they reached the door to the conference room. She pulled it open, and they entered to join the rest of the team. The woman went on, "According to official sources, Dean Winchester and his brother died in Monument, Colorado, back in 2007, when they blew up that police station with Special Agent Henricksen inside it. But here, come see."

Everyone else was already waiting for them. Biting her lip, technical analyst Penelope Garcia held the remote to the television, which was showing a security camera recording of a bank robbery. Special Agents Jennifer Jareau, affectionately known as "JJ", Spencer Reid, and David Rossi, a former chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit himself, were all huddled in a gaggle in front of the screen.

After joining them, Hotchner, Morgan, and Prentiss stood in silence, their eyes narrowed as they stared at the television. The bank robbery had ended, and the broadcast was now showing footage from a shooting in a diner. There, easily identifiable – almost impossible to mistake them for anyone else, really – was Sam and Dean Winchester, heavily armed and grinning like psychopaths.

And then they were not alone.

"Who is that woman? The one who just – " asked Hotchner, squinting at the brunette on screen who had just finished making out with Winchester the Elder.

"Running screenshots from the video through the facial recognition database as we speak," said Penelope hurriedly. Her vermillion nails clacked against the screen of her tablet as she typed up a storm. It did not take her long to find an answer. "Sir-"

"Yes, Garcia?"

"Throwing a little something something up on the main screen now." Garcia made some complicated gesture on her tablet, and the news broadcast paused and went split screen with the results from facial recognition.

As she scrolled across her tablet, she narrated for the team, "The woman is Faith Lehane, alias Hope Lyonne." A mugshot of the woman from the diner flashed up on the screen. In the harsh glare of some police station's fluorescent lighting, Lehane looked at least a decade younger with dark circles under her eyes.

Garcia continued, "Expunged convictions in California for one count of homicide in the second degree and several counts of felony assault – not to mention a sealed juvenile record. That'll take me a few minutes to get into – I'll send you the opened documents later."

"Agent Henricksen suspected she was an associate of the Winchesters back in oh seven," supplied Reid helpfully. At the others' surprised glances, he added, "I talked with him a couple of times about it, and he showed me his notes. Eidetic memory, remember?"

"Henricksen was real fired up about that case, wasn't he?" remarked Morgan.

"Yeah," agreed Reid. He frowned. "But he could never get enough evidence to prove it."

"Well, we've certainly got the evidence now," said Rossi, pointing towards the screen.

Nodding, Hotchner said, "Question is, how does she fit into the profile?" While his memory might not be as fool-proof as Spencer's, he remembered consulting on the Winchester problem with Henricksen and throwing together a quick profile. Most of the team had been present for that meeting, and the sheer variety of the Winchesters' criminal activity had been breathtaking and uncomfortably memorable.

"It – it doesn't make a lot of sense," Prentiss spoke up. From what Hotchner could recall, she had also been one of the deceased FBI agent's go-to's. "It's – to be honest, it's kind of shocking for the Winchesters to take up with a third partner for any significant period of time."

"Mmm," nodded Spencer. "Part of the reason that Henricksen consulted us in the first place was because of the deeply co-dependent relationship between the Winchester brothers. He needed help finding a way to get one of them to talk – in the unlikely chance that he could catch and detain them for long enough."

"Those two had a habit of slipping out of places, didn't they?" mused Rossi grimly.

"Yes," Garcia confirmed for the group. She was tapping away rhythmically at her tablet again, navigating through the server to access Henricksen's case files. "The Winchesters have a history of multiple escapes from police custody, town jails, and it looks like one time they broke out of a county detention center in Arkansas."

"And Lehane?" queried Hotchner.

"Checking now." The bright red-orange nails tapped more quickly. "It would appear that she broke out of the Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton in 2003."

Morgan raised both of his eyebrows. "And her record is expunged?"

"Yeah, crazy, huh?" The analyst continued to rattle off information. "I'm not seeing too much on why. Oh – looks like she escaped during that extreme smog crisis in Los Angeles. There's a mention in an admin file at the time noting that local LEOs and state police were overwhelmed with the sheer amount of robberies, homicides, and disappearances to track down one escaped con."

Hotchner frowned. "Despite her being a murderer?"

"Apparently she had been a model prisoner during her three years in Stockton. Only got into fights if someone else went after her, which, according to these administrative records, she always won. Still, not clear why they expunged her record. There's no specific lawyer mentioned here, either. Just one big firm, Wolfram and Hart, who handled the expungement process."

"Bottom line," said JJ, speaking for the first time, "she's probably every bit as dangerous as either Sam or Dean Winchester." Arms crossed over her stomach, she stared at the mugshot of Lehane still frozen on the television screen.

"I would say that's probably a safe assumption to make," Hotchner concurred. "All right. We all need to sleep tonight, but first thing in the morning, I'll talk to the director's office and see who's currently assigned, let them know that we're taking the case." He looked at each team member in turn as he handed out assignments. "Reid, please find Henricksen's files on the Winchesters."

The skinny multi-hyphenate PhD gave him a double thumbs' up.

"Good. Penelope, can you send each of us whatever it is that the California DOJ has on Faith Lehane?"

"You got it, boss."

"Morgan, Prentiss, I need you to look back, see if you can figure out where and how exactly she got involved with the Winchesters and start working on a profile. It's going to be important."

The two agents nodded.

"Yes, sir."

"On it."

"Thank you. Dave, if you don't mind, I want you to start looking at each of these spree killing incidents – we need to know what they have in common. JJ, prepare a statement for the media."

"Sir, do you really think it's a good idea to let the Winchesters and Lehane know we're looking for them?" asked JJ cautiously.

Aaron exhaled heavily. "That's a good question. The way I see it, these killings are a taunt," he explained. "They're playing a game, daring someone to come along and play. It's time to let them know we're paying attention and that we accept their challenge."

"You think it's a challenge?" said Rossi, his brow furrowing.

"Yes. That's definitely what they're doing, here. They're too intelligent to do this and not realize somebody high up at the FBI would get involved. Okay," he said with a sigh, picking up the remote from the conference table and turning off the large television. Faith Lehane's face vanished. "Six hours of sleep, people, and then let's go to work."

. . . to be continued . . .


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for the great feedback! Sorry for the delay - vacation and the night shift got the better of me. Back to weekly updates after this, I swear!

* * *

**September 13th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 11:35 a.m.**

Faith Lehane was waiting on the curb when the Pontiac pulled up outside the Des Moines airport sixteen hours after she hung up the phone. To Sam's surprise, he didn't think that he had ever seen the Slayer actively trying to blend in before. She had traded in her trademark leather and lipstick for faded blue jeans and a tattered hoodie with a dark green John Deere cap tugged down over her face.

Faith tossed her backpack into the rear seat and slid in afterwards. "Morning, boys. You bring me coffee?"

"Better than that." Sam swiveled in his seat as Dean peeled away from the curb. "Black coffee and doughnuts." He passed a grease-stained cardboard box over into the backseat.

Faith snatched the pastries out of his hands. "G-d, whichever one of you thought of this, I love you," she commented, grabbing up a jelly donut and stuffing it into her mouth. "I could eat a hippo."

The younger hunter turned away from the stomach-churning sight of Faith devouring the jelly-filled doughnut. Strawberry jam dripped down the edges of her mouth, staining her chin a disturbingly blood-like crimson. "I pity the hippo," he murmured in an undertone.

In retaliation, Faith shoved the back of his seat. Since this was a General Motors and not the Chevy, she didn't hold back when she rammed her knee into the upholstery.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"I heard that."

Dean glanced quickly over his shoulder at Faith and then looked at his brother. "Do I need to separate you two?"

"No," said Faith unconvincingly as a glob of scarlet jam dropped from her chin onto her leg. The Slayer swallowed thickly. "I'm good."

"Whatever," Sam scoffed, but the corners of his mouth quirked upwards in a smile. "Pass me another sprinkled one?"

"You got it, Paul Bunyan. Coffee?"

"Coffee."

The trade of snacks and beverages was made. Shaking his head, Dean left the airport traffic circle and merged onto the highway. Once he had slipped across two more lanes, he said, "We got another chocola –"

"Here." The chocolate-frosted doughnut appeared by his shoulder before he could finish speaking. "What's the plan?" Faith asked, starting in on her second jelly.

"Go to Ankeny, find the Leviathans, and help them realize their childhood dream of being in two places at once," Sam informed her.

As she saluted him with her donut, Faith accidentally swiped a streak of red jelly across her nose. "Now, that," she declared, rubbing at the jam, "is what I call a good plan."

Indeed, the plan seemed foolproof. Locate the Impala, sneak up on the Leviathans, nip in for some quick beheading action, then get the hell out.

And at first, everything had worked out fine. The trio passed the Leviathan's Chevy as they dragged main. Parking the Pontiac on a side street, they began stealthily creeping up on the imposter Impala from the rear. All was going according to schedule.

But then the two police cruisers swerved in, sirens blaring, and the next thing Faith knew, she was facedown on the concrete with blood gushing from her nose and a heavy policeman's boot stamped firmly down into the small of her back while Sam made conciliatory arguments from a spread-eagled position across the hood of a police car and Dean clamored for his one phone call.

"Cuff 'em," growled the sandy-haired sheriff, pressing his foot down even harder onto the Slayer's spine.

"Let go," insisted Faith as sweaty hands wrestled her arms into a pair of cold handcuffs. After the steel clinked shut, the boot was removed, and the same clammy hands jerked her up to her feet. She tossed her head and blinked furiously. Her entire face stung like hell.

The sheriff met her glower unfazed. "Put all three of them in the car."

* * *

When they reached the station, the three deputies dragged Sam off to one of the interrogation rooms and shoved Faith and Dean into separate cells. As the steel door clanged and the lock clicked, the Slayer slumped onto the floor in the corner furthest from the door. She cradled her still-oozing nose between her chained wrists.

"I take it back," she moaned softly. "This was not a good plan."

Dean hardly seemed to hear her, too preoccupied with pacing the walls. "Hey!" he called out. "Don't I get my phone call?"

The Slayer blearily wondered who he could be wanting to call and then remembered that he had been talking to Bobby right before they got themselves popped.

"Hey!" The hunter raised his voice a few more decibels. "I need my phone call!"

"Ow," Faith muttered as she ducked her head down enough for her manacled hands to reach her nose. She gave the cartilage an experimental wiggle. "Yeah. Ow."

"Faith?" He had finally decided to pay attention to her now and was hovering at the edge of his cell closest to hers.

The Slayer lifted her head from her knees with a groaning, "I'm fine." She sniffed and then winded at the sharp pain that shot through her face. "How bad does it look?"

"Like it's broken."

Another tentative wiggle. "I think it's okay. You gonna call Bobby?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Good plan." She tilted her head back and yelled, "Hey! We need our damn phone calls!" Faith dropped the volume down to a half-whispered babbling. "And our Miranda rights. But I'm holding onto that for when we call the lawyers."

The hunter shook his head. "We don't get out of here before the Leviathans show up, and we won't need lawyers. No point in putting kibbles'n'bits on the stand."

"That's enough." Frowning, the sheriff rounded the corner. "Stop your caterwauling," he ordered sternly.

"Hey," persisted Dean. "I have a right to my phone call."

The man scoffed. "A right? You killed how many people over the last couple days, and you want me to harp on your rights? You got some nerve."

From her cell, the Slayer snorted.

"And you – " he pivoted to stare at the woman, half-hidden in shadow at the back of her cell. "I've read all about you. Faith Lehane, that it? I know what you did to that man in Sunnydale."

Faith bared her teeth in a silent snarl made gruesome by the dried blood and strawberry jam staining the lower half of her face. "You don't know jack sh-t," she hissed, playing up the psychotic killer aspect. If it made Dean seem more reasonable by comparison, it would be worth it. Her credibility was probably too far down the toilet, anyway.

The sheriff turned away from her and back to hunter. He raised a single eyebrow. "Company you keep, and you want me to give you a damn phone?"

"I didn't – please," Dean begged the older man to listen. "Just give me one – one phone call."

Gazing into the man's earnest face, the sheriff sighed. "Fine."

As the sheriff unclipped the phone from his belt, two of his deputies rounded the corner. The first one, tall and freckled, complained, "Boss, I don't think we should let 'em talk to each other like this. Let us take the girl. We'll put her in the back interrogation room. The FBI called – they don't want any of them in the same room."

Sighing for a second time, the sheriff passed his keys over. The two deputies unlocked the cell and then walked in. With two of them and the sheriff and Dean behind bars on the other side of the hallway, there was nothing Faith could do. It wasn't worth trying to escape. She scooted further back into the corner of the cell until her spine was pressed solidly against the cement blocks. Still, she had to let the deputies drag her upwards.

Dean crowded against the bars of his cell. "Hey – "

"Dean – "

"Cut it out, lovebirds," growled the taller deputy, pinning the Slayer's elbow against her side and shoving her into the hallway. She took a half-step forward, her features set with grim determination.

"Hey – " repeated the hunter warningly from low in his throat.

The Slayer looked up from the tile beneath her shoes, and for half a heartbeat, their eyes locked. Then the deputies hustled her past him and out of sight.

They frog-marched Faith down along the back hallway. As they passed a steel door with a small window in the center, she unsuccessfully dragged her heels, hoping to catch a brief view of Sam.

"Keep moving," snapped the freckled deputy, giving her a hard shove past the hunter's interrogation room. He forced her another fifteen feet along the corridor and then pushed her through an open steel door into a small, windowless room barely eight feet by ten feet. A single black video camera was nailed to the ceiling in the far corner.

"Get in there," snarled the other deputy, the one holding her arm, and he kicked her in the small of the back. Faith stumbled forwards and twisted to the side to avoid smashing her face into the steel table locked down to the concrete floor. She landed on her knees instead. The door to the interrogation room slammed shut, and the key turned ominously in the lock.

Hopping back up to her feet, Faith spun around in time to see the freckled deputy smirking as his form wavered and shifted. His entire body blurred, like a wave passing through a reflection on the surface of a pond, until it finally solidified into a familiar face. One that Faith had only seen straight on once before, when she was trying to pound the living daylights out of it.

"God, I'm hot," she said with a whistle of admiration, bringing her chained hands up into a guard position at the level of her chest.

The Leviathan wearing Faith's body laughed and leaned back against the locked door. "See, this is why I threatened to bash the other two's heads in if they didn't let me be you," said not-Faith, grinning. "You're fun. Sure, you're a stone-hearted bitch who'll spread her legs for any trucker with a rash, but at least you're not having constant Satan-vision or drowning under the guilt of not saving the world enough. You do what you want. You kill who you want.

"For example," the monster's grin widened, "two months ago, you murdered a child, and you didn't even feel it. Just didn't care. After all, what's one more body along the blood-strewn path you've left behind you? Gotta admit, I'm almost impressed."

Faith rolled her eyes. As taunting went, this couldn't even raise the hair on her arms. A Leviathan, no matter how in a rush to eat her it might be, simply couldn't compare to Angelus's cool breath on the back of her neck as he promised unspeakable things. There were only so many times you could panic before panicking lost its power.

Its grin shifting into an irritated frown, the Leviathan kept speaking, "But the one thing I don't get is why, I mean, for the love of God, why are you so hung up on these sad sack hunters? You're miles out of their league. Unless the sex with short bus really is that great -"

"You gonna eat me, or are you just gonna talk me to death?" Faith twisted her wrists, slipping her thumbs down into the loose edges of her cuffs and made fists around the edges of the steel. She gave a cold-eyed smile. "Cuz, honestly, sweetheart, I've never been big on the foreplay."

* * *

**Washington, D.C., 1:15 p.m. EST**

"Hey, boss." Uncharacteristically, Morgan had not even knocked before walking into Hotchner's office.

Hotch looked up from the giant pile of papers on his desk. His meager six forms from yesterday had multiplied like the horniest of bunnies overnight, and now, between taking over the Winchester case and finishing up the evals from Quantico, he doubted that he would see the surface of his desk for another month. "What's on your mind?"

"We just got a call from a local sheriff out in Ankeny, Iowa. He's got the Winchesters and Lehane in custody."

"All right." The Supervisory Special Agent was on his feet immediately, grabbing his go-bag from its place on the extra chair beside the door. "Get everyone moving, tell them to get their things. Wheels up in thirty."

* * *

**Ankeny, Iowa, 1:28 p.m. CST**

Sam had been sitting chained to that steel interrogation table for the last forty-five minutes, panic brewing in the pit of his stomach. The room was quiet, disturbingly quiet, and the only noise beyond the sound of his breathing was the whispered taunts of the Devil ringing inside his ears. When at last the door creaked open and his brother stepped in, relief swept over him.

"Dean!" He held out his hands to be freed.

Dean tilted his head to the side and smiled, far too cheerfully. Chills ran down Sam's back. "I'm not your brother," said the Leviathan. "But I am Dean-adjacent."

The hunter jerked back in his seat, as far away from the Leviathan as he could possibly make himself. Amused, the monster came and sat on the edge of the table, bracing his elbow on his leg in a relaxed posture that was uniquely Dean. Leaning forward, he announced, "I just want to let you know how much I've really grown to hate you and your brother since we've been wearing you."

He continued complaining, "I just don't get it. You could be anything. You're strong, you're uninhibited. You're smart enough, believe it or not. But you're so caught up in being good and taking care of each other." Not-Dean said the words with great disgust.

"What do you care?" demanded Sam, his eyes flashing between the Leviathan and the locked door. He considered his chances, and realized they were dismal.

Rising from the table, Dean-Adjacent paced halfway around the room. "Because it pisses me off! You're wasting a perfectly good opportunity to subjugate the weak."

He exhaled and then spun on his heels, slamming his palms down onto the table and leaning across it to leer at Sam. "Here's the deal. Dean . . . well," the monster laughed, "He thinks you're nut-balls. He thinks you're off your game."

Sam pursed his lips. "You planning on killing me anytime soon, or is this some sort of 'play with your food' bull?"

"All right, all right." The Leviathan held his hands up in a fake gesture of innocence and chuckled a second time. "You know, I guess that's why Dean never told you that he and that Slayer whore of his killed your precious Amy and her little son."

The bottom dropped out of Sam's stomach, and his universe tilted on its axis. All he could do was to stare at the Leviathan in horror and alarm.

Somewhere deep between his ears, Lucifer cackled.

"There it is!" Dean-Adjacent clapped his hands. "The look on your face. That is priceless! Ha! That's what I've been waiting for. Now, I can eat you." He took a menacing step towards Sam and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. "You see, I like my meat a little bitter."

Clang! The door to the interrogation room swung open again, and Sam's brother – the real one this time – sprinted through it. He had an axe in one hand and a plastic bucket full of liquid in the other, which he flung at the Leviathan. Dean-Adjacent screamed in agony as the skin on his arms erupted in steaming black boils. Before he could do more than scream, Dean hewed off the creature's head in a single two-handed stroke.

Oily black Leviathan blood splatter reaching past his elbows, he looked over at his little brother. "Well, that felt good. You okay?"

Throat dry, Sam nodded, unable to speak.

"Good. You sit tight. Sheriff's right behind me – he's gonna unlock your cuffs. I've gotta find Faith."

Frozen, the hunter watched as his murderous brother charged out of the room as quickly as he had come in, gone long before Sam could even find his voice.

* * *

The Leviathan wearing Faith's face smirked, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "And here I was trying to be considerate. You've got a whole lot of trauma bouncing around this head of yours. Almost enough to make a girl crazy. Oh, wait. I forgot. You've been pathologically insane since you tried to murder that john of your mother's. And now, look at you . . . like mother like daughter. Hooking must just be in your genes."

"Eat me. Please." The Slayer dropped her arms down to her sides. "Anything's better than the psychobabble. Just get on with it."

"If you insist." The monster rushed at her, but Faith had been expecting this.

She watched the Leviathan approach with dead eyes. The woman allowed it to crash into her. As she toppled backwards, Faith brought her knee up and hooked her ankle around the back of the monster's leg. With a jerk and a twist, she tugged the creature down with her. The two crashed onto the concrete floor. Faith landed on the bottom, the Leviathan's claws scrabbling at her face as the creature shifted another time, transforming its visage from Faith's to a gaping, shark-like mouth with dagger-sized teeth.

After scratching their way down the Slayer's cheeks, the monster's hands closed around Faith's throat. Faith pushed her cuffs upwards, pressing her wrists against each other to slide through the thin space between the creature's arms. She pushed ineffectually at its chest.

"Try harder," laughed the Leviathan. "Come on, you can do better."

"You're right," gasped Faith, twisting her neck sharply to the right and just barely managing to avoid the monstrous teeth. "I can."

She snapped her wrists open, slamming the six-inch steel chain between her cuffs upwards against the Leviathan's neck. At the same time, Faith planted her boots firmly against the floor, trapping the monster's body between her knees, and gave her hips a sharp wrench, flipping them over so that the Slayer was now on top.

Faith continued to force her chain downwards until the edge of the steel was slowly slicing through the Leviathan's throat. Her arms ached, but she shoved her arms down, down, down against the concrete. Tarry black arterial goo sprayed up into her face as she obliterated the carotid arteries. The chain worked its way through the soft tissues with a ragged, wet, sucking sound. When she reached bone, there was a moment's hang up, but Faith just gritted her teeth and pressed harder.

Finally, the head rolled off the Leviathan's body, dropping the last three inches to the floor with an anticlimactic thunk. Faith rocked back onto her knees. Her entire front was drenched in the ice cold oily substance, and she could taste gasoline where the spray had splashed into her mouth and nose.

Keys jingled in the door. Wild-eyed, the Slayer leapt to her feet and whirled to face the newcomer. One down. Two to go. She raised her manacled hands in front of her face, heedless of the black goo that continued to drip steadily down from the handcuffs.

The door opened. It was Dean, a large white bottle of industrial cleaner in one hand and an axe still wet with Leviathan blood in the other hand. He jerked to a halt at the sight of the god-awful mess that awaited him. "Faith?"

"Dean or not Dean?" demanded the Slayer. She took a wary step around the edge of the room, putting the steel table between them.

"Dean."

"Prove it."

"You ate four and a half donuts in the car this morning."

The Slayer relaxed, and her shoulders slackened. "Okay."

He did not release his grip on the axe handle. "Now your turn."

"What?" Her eyes widened in surprise.

"You prove it."

She stared at him in frank disbelief. "If I was a Leviathan, I would've eaten me, not decapitated me. Plus, this's Leviathan crap I went swimming in. God, Dean. Use your head."

"All right. Fine, fine." The hunter lowered the axe and took a further step into the room. "Are you okay?"

Faith shifted her weight from side to side, and her shoes squelched in the puddle of liquid darkness seeping out from the headless Leviathan. "Bit sticky," she admitted.

Deciding not to comment on that, Dean gazed at the decapitated head. "You did that with the handcuffs?" he guessed.

The Slayer nodded tersely. As she did so, a mangled glob of skin and muscle loosened from her hair and plummeted to the floor. Dean winced. Faith glanced down at the front of her shirt. "I need a shower."

"Yeah. That's, uh, probably a good idea. You kinda look like the girl from the Grudge . . . just a little more gloopy."

"You have the key?" Faith gestured with her still-dripping hands.

"The sheriff's got it. He should be along in a second, soon as he releases Sam."

"Right." She had momentarily forgotten about the younger Winchester. "How is he?"

Dean cracked a wan smile. "Cleaner than you or me, although that's not exactly a tough competition to win right now."

"And the other two Leviathans?"

"Heads currently divorced from the rest of 'em."

"I guess that's something." The Slayer shuffled her feet, and more squelching ensued. "What's with the soap?" She nodded towards the jug of industrial cleaner.

Grateful for something else to talk about, Dean quickly informed her, "Borax. Bobby had a breakthrough. Burns the heck outta Leviathans."

"Good to know."

"Dean, are you – " Sam and the sheriff froze in the doorway, taking in the dead Leviathan and the gore-encrusted Slayer.

"Mother of God," breathed the sheriff.

Faith shrugged, her handcuffs rattling. "No mothers. No God. Just me. Keys?"

The sheriff stared at her in mute horror. Faith was vaguely aware that Dean's Grudge comparison hadn't been too far off. "They bleed more when you do it slow," she explained, self-conscious and impatient. "Now, can you get me out of these? I'm not gonna bite."

"It's okay. I've got it." Dean set his axe down on the table and retrieved the keys from the petrified sheriff. He walked over to the Slayer, careful not to stain the soles of his boots, and unlocked the cuffs. He had difficulty sliding the key into the keyhole due to all the Leviathan gunk pooling there.

"You got a shower here?" he called back over his shoulder.

"Yes. In the – in the locker room."

"I can't walk out there," said Faith as she dropped the handcuffs onto the Leviathan's corpse. She gingerly touched her wrists, which were raw and chafed. "Leave a trail of me-sized footprints headed away from my dead body? I don't think so."

Without waiting for the others to respond, she toed off her boots and unbuckled her belt. After dropping her jeans, she ripped her destroyed t-shirt off from over her head. Faith wiped the worst of the mess off of her face and arms with the inside of the T-shirt and stepped away from the pile of stained clothing. Now wearing only her socks, underwear, and bra, Faith walked past the men.

On her way, she snagged the revolver out of the waistband of Dean's jeans. "Just in case," she answered his questioning look. "You can bag those and burn them." She nodded back at her abandoned clothes. "Y'all got this?" Not bothering to hear their answer, Faith left.

"Look, I believed you," said the sheriff to the hunters after the Slayer had disappeared from view. "But this . . . "

Dean patted the man on the shoulder. "We did what we had to. You know that. Just tell the Feds when that get here that your prisoners went wild and killed your deputies in a shoot-out."

"And the heads?" asked the sheriff weakly.

"We'll take 'em. Toss 'em in a river. Thanks for the help."

"They . . . They ate my deputies."

"Yeah. Sorry about that." Dean said awkwardly. He realized the timing for his next question was not great, but he had to ask anyway. "You got any clothes laying around that my friend can borrow until we get back to our car?"

* * *

**Somewhere over Ohio, 4:00 p.m. EST**

There came a tapping at his shoulder, and Hotchner reluctantly lowered his noise-cancelling headphones as Agent Prentiss slipped into the empty seat beside him.

Once she thought she had his attention, Prentiss ventured, "Sir?"

"Yes, Emily?"

"I just finished talking with the pilot." Emily grimaced, her expression a clear warning that Aaron would not like what came next.

"And? Everything all right with the plane?"

"The plane's fine, thankfully. No, it's something else. The pilot got a call from headquarters. Apparently, police in Ankeny are reporting that there was an escape attempt – the Winchesters and Faith Lehane managed to take out two deputies, but they were shot by the sheriff in the process. He's already sending the remains to the county coroner. The director's asking if we want to turn around."

"No," said Hotch without pausing to think. This was a little too convenient, too wrapped up and nicely tied in a bow. The Winchesters had died before – everyone had been convinced that they were killed in that explosion with Henricksen. This time, he wanted to do some investigating and make sure of their deaths. It didn't do to have Unsubs who were constantly dying and being resurrected. He preferred more closure than that. "We'll keep going. I want to see those bodies for myself. I've got an odd feeling about this."

"Okay," said Prentiss. She nodded in understanding and rose to her feet. "I'll tell the pilot."

* * *

**September 13th, 2012, Lousiville, Nebraska, 7:30 p.m.**

"That's the last one," announced Sam as he tossed the final cardboard box into the Platte River. Standing shoulder to shoulder with his brother, he watched while the Leviathan head, now packaged courtesy of the USPS Priority Flat Rate service and half a roll of duct tape, slowly sank beneath the murky surface of the river.

"Who was that?"

"You, I think."

"Mmm." Dean grinned. "So now I'm sleeping with the fishes." He started heading back along the dirt access road towards the Acadian, where they had left Faith napping in the back seat. When he realized his brother was not walking behind him, he asked, "You coming?"

Sam hung back. "I . . . I dunno, dude." He exhaled loudly. "I dunno."

Dean stopped and turned. Something was off. For a half second, he had to reassure himself that it was not his actual brother's head they had just thrown in the river. "Sam?"

"I guess . . . I knew you kept Faith's secrets. And I know there's stuff that you don't tell me. I just didn't think you'd do something like this."

"Something like what?" the older man said gruffly.

"I know about Amy."

The other shoe finally dropped. In an odd way, Dean almost felt relieved. "Sammy – "

His brother shook his head. "Shut up. I don't want to hear it. I don't – I can't trust you, man."

Dean's eyes grew steely. "Like I can trust you?" he scoffed. "When you go running off making deals with monsters, just as long as they're pretty? That ring any Ruby-shaped bells for you, Sam? When're you gonna learn? And were you ever gonna tell me?"

"I can't . . . I can't friggin believe this." The younger hunter looked away. "I . . . I'm gonna go."

"What?" All of the air disappeared from Dean's lungs. His throat went dusty-dry, bone-dry, and he couldn't speak.

"I can't trust you, Dean!" Sam paused, his chest heaving. He ran a hand through his hair and inhaled. Finally, he said, "I think for a while we're better off on our own."

"At least let me give you a ride to -"

"No. I'm – I'm good." Having no desire to hear whatever it was his brother had to say, Sam spun on his heel and headed to the Acadian. He opened the shotgun door, retrieved his gear and laptop bag, and started walking down the access road towards the highway. Dean watched his brother's back until Sam dwindled to a speck on the horizon, and then he looked down into the waters of the Platte rushing past.

Five minutes passed while he stared at the river, until a small voice spoke at his left shoulder. "Hey."

He glanced at the Slayer out of the corner of his eye. "Hey. Thought you were asleep."

Rubbing at her bandaged wrists, Faith shook her head. "I woke up when Sam slammed the door. What happened?"

Dean sucked his teeth and looked back towards the water below. "He found out. About Bozeman."

"Oh." Her face fell. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Dean tried to keep his tone casual. "He was gonna find out sooner or later. Too bad it wasn't later."

Faith nudged him with her elbow. "You okay?'

"Yeah."

He was lying, and they both knew it.

"Come on," said the man after a brief silence. "We'd better put some more distance between us and Iowa."

"You wanna come to California?" she offered.

The hunter contemplated the idea. "Huh. That sounds like it actually might not suck. You think Buffy and her boy toy'll mind if I crash for a day or two?"

"Should be fine. Just warning you, though. Boy toy's got a movie theater in his basement."

"Sold." Dean turned away from the river, staring down the road in the direction that Sam had disappeared.

"He'll come around." Faith bumped her hip into his. "Sam's your brother. He won't be mad forever."

"I know." He cleared his throat. "California?"

"California."

With one last exhale, Dean relinquished the fragile hope that his brother would return and began striding towards the Pontiac. "Come on," he called to the Slayer when she did not instantly follow. "If we're going to earthquake country, we'd better get started."


	3. Chapter 3

**September 13th, 2012, Ankeny, Iowa, 7:47 p.m.**

The sight that awaited the BAU team in the back room of the police station was the opposite of what Aaron had been hoping to find. He stared at the the three bodies laying on old EMS gurneys in heavy plastic body bags, his eyes focusing instinctively on the places where their heads ought to have been. The Supervisory Special Agent cleared his throat. "What, uh, what do you mean, this is all of the bodies that there is?" he asked in disbelief.

The sheriff, a middle-aged man a little past his prime, explained shakily that while trying to escape, the Winchesters and Lehane had all been shot in the head by one of his deputies with a shotgun after they got their hands on a sidearm that one of the other officers had left unattended. Unfortunately, a shotgun shell at close range could be devastating to the skull and it contents, and all that had been left was scattered bits of tissue. The flecks of blood, brain, and bone had already been washed off and thrown away by the station's overly eager cleaning crew.

He was a nice enough sheriff, as these things went, and Hotch got the sense that he would be very good at handling the usual depravity of a mid-sized city. But his attitude tended towards washing his hands of the whole thing, and that was concerning. Too many local law enforcement officers had washed their hands of the Winchesters when they pulled off a daring escape or gave some psychotic excuse out of a horror movie to explain away their crimes.

Aaron had not been good friends with Victor Henriksen, but he, like many in the bureau, laid his death directly at the feet of the Winchesters. Unlike the others, who had simply allowed the Winchesters to disappear, Hotchner would not. Henriksen's memory deserved more than that.

While the SSA was turning these things over in his head, the sheriff received a call on his radio about a four-car pileup on the highway into Ankeny and stepped out to respond.

Rossi waited until the door had thudded closed after the sheriff's departure before turning to the rest of the team. "He's lying about something," he said quietly in a tone that was thoughtful without being judgmental.

"I got the same feeling," said Morgan. The bald man frowned at the three headless corpses in front of them. "I'm not convinced that a shotgun would do this. I mean, two of these look too smooth, like maybe they were done with a blade. And the third – sure, it's irregular, but irregular doesn't necessarily equal shotgun."

Pacing around the gurneys, Emily peered more closely at the bodies. She pointed out, "For what it's worth, the tattoos match." The woman indicated the spiral of barbed wire on the headless woman's right upper arm and the pentagram encircled in flames on each man's chest, just below the collarbone and to the left of the sternum.

"Mmm." His mouth twisting into a frown that matched Morgan's, Reid shook his head. "Tattoos are pretty easy to fake," he observed, suggesting that the matches were not worth much. "We need DNA." He shifted his weight from one foot to the next. "And we should probably talk to the sheriff more, since we think he's dishonest."

"You think he's in on this?" asked Hotch, raising an eyebrow. Spencer probably knew the Winchester files better than any of the rest of them, and like as not, he already had some sort of statistical way to estimate the probability of the sheriff having been unduly influenced by the brothers and their latest accomplice.

"It would not be the first time that Dean and Sam Winchester had managed to convince local law enforcement to take their side. They are both known to be incredibly charismatic."

"And Lehane?"

"She _is_ a beautiful woman," noted Prentiss, adding as an afterthought, "When she had her head, I mean. "Maybe she used that."

"Either way, I think we're going to be here for a few days," said Rossi. "If we want to make sure we cover all the angles."

"Dave is right," concurred Hotchner, and it was to their credit that none of his team members expressed disappointment with his decision. "There are far too many unanswered questions here, too many fill-in-the-blanks. We aren't going to head anywhere until we know exactly what happened here, and why."

* * *

**September 13th, 2012, North Platte, Nebraska, 11:21 p.m.**

"Hey, talk to me. Come on, Dean. Don't do this. Please talk to me."

Ignoring her quiet request, the hunter stormed out of the car and into the motel room, nearly slamming the Impala door. Biting her lip, Faith grabbed her backpack and followed him inside. Neither of them spoke as they warded the room or while they took alternating showers to get the remaining chunks of Leviathan goop out of their hair and skin and out from under their nails.

Somewhere along the drive across Nebraska, Dean's stoicism about the loss of his brother had regressed through sad, irritated, and pissed until he fell somewhere beyond pissed: furious. Faith knew that at least part of that anger was directed at her, as it ought to be. If she had not decided to take the nuclear option with that kitsune kid back in Bozeman, this would not be happening now. Sam would not have stormed off – or if he had, at least she wouldn't be caught somewhere in the middle of a Winchester firefight.

Sighing, the Slayer dropped her damp bath towel onto the threadbare carpet and exchanged it for a pair of shorts and a tank top that she had stuffed into the bottom of her backpack. She took the bed closest to the door and tucked a stake and a knife under the pillow that she wasn't using. Regular precautions and all.

Arms wrapped around her bare knees, she sat back against the headboard and watched while Dean grumbled at the television, a bottle of clear alcohol in one hand and the TV remote in the other. After his shower, the hunter only re-layered up to a t-shirt and jeans – which might mean that he was considering calming down – but then he had gone to the effort of putting his boots back on. Faith did not like that. Boots at bedtime was never a good sign.

The man paced restlessly in front of the screen, and the tension radiating off of him was palpable. Concerned, Faith ran a hand through her wet hair, brushing the ends back behind her ears with her fingers. Gnawing on her lip, she tracked Dean's angry movements with her brown eyes and debated whether it was worth speaking up.

Finally, after a solid ten minutes of watching his steps grown shorter and choppier, the expression on his face going from stormy to world-ending apocalyptic nuclear mushroom cloud, she cleared her throat. "Dean?"

"What?" His tone was less snappy than she had expected, but it still warned that she had better make it quick.

"I'm sorry about earlier," Faith rushed to get the words out. Apologizing twice in one day for the same thing was definitely not her schtick, but desperate times called for desperate measures. "With Sam. And, ugh, the whole kitsune thing. That was totally my fault, and -"

"Quit, Faith." He turned away from the television to face her, lowering the alcohol from his mouth.

_Oh, sh-t,_ thought the Slayer with a sense of growing dread. From the front, she could recognize the bottle as the old Everclear that Sam kept around for wound sterilization in emergencies. No one drank it, and everyone joked about how that stuff was probably older than the invention of the motor car. She had not realized that Dean was in such a hurry to get wasted.

She tuned back in to catch the hunter saying, "This isn't about you." His tone was sharp and jagged enough to cut, harsh enough to leave her ears bleeding. "I'm the one who killed that Amy girl. He still woulda been pissed enough to run off based on that. You were just the cherry on top of this crap sundae."

"But – "

Interrupting before she could apologize yet again, Dean blinked at her, his green eyes clear and hard despite all the Everclear. "Trouble is, Boston," he said coolly, "you'n'me, we're too alike in all the things that Sam wishes were different about me."

Faith made no reply to this. She could tell an insult from a compliment – and this had definitely not been the latter.

He went on, "So maybe that's why the stuff we do drives him abso-frigging-lutely nuts." The man took another deep swig from the bottle of Everclear, then said, "Don't bother with saying sorry; it won't change a damn thing. And who knows? Maybe you were right. Maybe he was right; maybe I was right. It doesn't matter now. Sam's gone."

He paused and regarded her, all pale elbows and knees in a garden of cheap, faded flower-printed fabric. Dean drank yet again from the Everclear, now only about two-thirds full. Swallowing, he told her, "You should get some sleep."

"And relive beheading myself with handcuffs?" Faith shook her head. "No thanks, man."

For a brief instant, the hunter smiled. "That was pretty badass."

She grinned back at him. "That's me. Pretty and badass."

Dean snorted. "Don't forget humble."

The Slayer's grin widened. "I never do."

Silence resumed as the man began pacing again. Eventually, after debating whether or not it was worth poking the bear, Faith came to a decision and asked, "You – uh, you gonna come to bed?"

He gave her a skeptical look, and she flushed blotchy red.

"Not this bed," she hurried to explain. "That one."

"Nah." Dean took another sip. "Not yet. In a bit. You want me to hit the lights?"

"Doesn't matter that much to me. Just, could you stop blocking the TV?"

"Sure." Finally stopping his pacing, the hunter flicked through the channels until he landed on an old rerun of Doctor Sexy, M.D. Then he turned off the overhead lights and plopped onto the bed next to Faith, disrupting her under-pillow weapons storage space. He crossed his arms behind his head and nearly elbowed her in the process.

"I told you – not this bed," rebuked the Slayer, gathering her stake and dagger and slipping them beneath her own pillow with a frown.

"You gonna push me off?"

"No."

"Here, have a drink." Dean passed her the bottle of clear liquid.

"Dude, I don't want to -"

"Drink."

"Fine." Faith took a quick sip, resisting the urge to cough, and handed it back. She really despised any vodka-adjacent liquor. "You happy now?"

He waved a hand for her to be quiet. "Shh. I'm watching Doctor Sexy."

"You are such a pain in my ass, Winchester." But she looked at him and smiled as she said it.

"Likewise." Dean returned the smile, then he grabbed the woman's upper arm and tugged her over sideways, pulling her out of her little huddle and up against his side. The bottle of Everclear was halfway empty now.

"You're grabby when you're drunk," Faith pointed out, pushing his hands away. "And a bit of a jerkwad."

"And you're literally a cold bitch," complained Dean, running a rough palm over the Slayer's bare forearm. "Why aren't you wearing more clothes?"

"I tried to pack light for the flight over." She shoved him off and pulled the comforter up to her chin.

"Oh, right."

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

Faith smiled again, her teeth bared in warning. "Call me a bitch again, and I'll cut your balls off. Get it?"

"Got it. Sorry. I won't."

The smile remained chilly. "Good."

On the next commercial break, Dean staggered off of the bed and wandered into the small motel bathroom, where he fiddled with the sink and the paper cups wrapped in plastic. After a few minutes, he returned with a cup of water. He held it out to her. "Here. You can rinse your mouth out. Sorry for being a dick."

"You should be." Faith downed the tap water in one gulp, then pushed the cup back into his hand, wincing. "Ugh. That's nasty. What've they got in their pipes, tin or something?"

"Guess so."

"Eugh." She grimaced. "I almost think that was worse than the Everclear . . . No, nothing's worse than Everclear. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Faith did not say anything else until Doctor Sexy finally saved the day and the episode came to an end. Exhaustion sinking in, she rolled onto her side and turned away from the man lying next to her. Pulling the tacky motel comforter up and over her head, she muttered, "Good night, Dean."

"'Night," came the half-slurred response.

He was going to be an even worse pain in her ass to deal with when morning came. But that was a problem for tomorrow's Faith. Tonight, all the Slayer wanted to do was sleep.

* * *

**September 14th, 2012, Ankeny, Iowa, 12:28 a.m.**

Hotchner was startled out of a deep sleep and a dream featuring a quiet vacation where no un-sub related emergencies occurred by the abrasive, hectic ringing of the phone on his hotel room nightstand. He listened for a brief moment to the voice on the other end of the line and then interrupted gruffly, "Morgan, it's after midnight. What is it?"

"They've found him," the usually calm and collected agent rattled off, speaking so quickly that the ends and beginnings of his words nearly ran into one another. "Out in some parking lot in Nebraska. He was ranting and raving, talking to himself – and apparently he was saying something about a devil? State police are bringing him our way as we speak – three vehicle escort."

"Found who?" asked Hotch, still sleep-muzzled and not following.

"One of our three corpses. Sam Winchester. He's alive and kicking."

* * *

**September 13th, 2012, North Platte, Nebraska, 11:30 p.m.**

Dean had a vague feeling that what he was about to do was _BAD_ with all capital letters, but he was certain that he didn't give a flying frak. While the Everclear had succeeded at taking the edges off of things, he felt the nauseating pendulum of his emotions swing from 'numb' to 'maybe horny' and then wildly careen back past 'numb' and all the way to 'depressed' again.

Not that the Slayer was being of any use at all. The last thing that he needed right now was more of her apologies – or, even worse, the way her brown eyes managed to walk the perilously thin line between reproachful and judgmental. When he stepped into the bathroom to retrieve a drink for Faith, he decided to give her a little something to help her fall asleep more quickly. He knew that she kept a little Restoril in her bag for when the nightmares and insomnia got real bad.

Finding the maroon and aqua capsules was easy. They were with the rest of Faith's emergency supplies in a little ziplock baggy that she kept in a case beside her toothbrush. Dean halfway recalled that she usually took one of the thirty milligram pills. He emptied two of them into a water glass and swirled the glass around for twenty seconds until the powder dissolved completely. As he pressed the baggy closed, the man noticed a couple of bright tablets in pink and blue with a curlicue logo stamped onto them nestled amid the rest of the emergency stash.

Huh. He hadn't figured Faith for a big E fan. Dean placed one of the tablets onto his tongue and held it against the roof of his mouth, then counted to ten before carrying the water glass back into the main part of the motel room.

"Here," he said, pushing the tablet into the side of his cheek so that he could talk. "You can rinse your mouth out. Sorry for being a dick."

"You should be."

He watched as the Slayer drank the water – Restoril and all – and then handed the cup back to him.

"Ugh." She grimaced and complained about the taste of the water, but she did not accuse him of having anything to do with it.

Dean suppressed the urge to smile. Soon enough, those brown eyes would be closed tight, and there would be no one to judge him.

* * *

**September 14th, 2012, Ankeny, Iowa, 12:30 a.m.**

"My God," said Hotch, hardly daring to breathe. He sat up in bed and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. "Sam Winchester turned himself in?"

"No," Morgan answered. Thankfully, now that he had delivered his big news, the agent slowed his speech, and his enunciation became much clearer. "Civilians called in to report a disturbance at a McDonald's at some small town in Nebraska. Apparently, Winchester was there ordering a Big Mac and an apple pie, but they were out of pie for the night."

Thinking aloud, Aaron interrupted him. "Pie – that's one of his brother's favorite foods, yes?"

"Written in Henricksen's notes, yeah." Derek went on, "Anyway, when they told him the pie was gone, Winchester started talking to the air, whining and complaining about how his brother would be so mad. The manager tried to be polite about it at first – guess they get quite a few schizophrenic patrons on the regular out there – but that didn't help at all. Winchester kept acting more and more strangely. Finally, he agreed to go outside – that was when an off-duty highway patrolman recognized who he was and called it in."

"Did he put up a struggle?"

"No, and that's the surprising thing, Hotch. He just went along with it. Didn't resist, didn't say boo."

"Any signs of his brother?"

"That's the even weirder part. Nebraska police checked the security cameras at the McDonald's but there's no evidence that Dean was ever there."

Hotch stared at the lamp, his mind racing. This was new. And new meant significant. "Which begs the question, why did they split up? Has WInchester said anything?"

"Nothing useful, according to the officer I spoke with. He just alternates between ranting and raving and sitting there quietly – almost catatonic, the lieutenant said."

"That's . . . unexpected."

"Yeah. Especially when you factor in that Henricksen always thought Dean was the less stable of the two, not Sam."

"Right. Sam was supposed to be the more high-functioning one."

"Pretty much," agreed Morgan.

"Okay. Call Nebraska back. Tell them to bring him to Des Moines, to the Polk County Jail, and to go ahead and process him. We'll be by first thing in the morning. I want at least two officers in the room with him at all times until we get there."

"No more escape attempts?" the agent hazarded dryly.

"No. And no more disappearances and faked deaths either, if we have anything to say about it. It's time for us to get to the bottom of this."

* * *

**September 14, 2012, 2:30 a.m.**

Faith felt someone tugging at her left side. She flung one arm wildly in the direction of whatever was bothering her and simultaneously reached under her pillow with her other hand, fingers spread out to catch the hilt of her knife.

"No, you don't."

Faith recognized that voice, just as she instinctively recognized the muscled arms that had looped themselves under her knees and around her waist and were lifting her up, up, up into the air.

She attempted to open her eyes, but they would not follow commands. The Slayer tried to say, "Put me down," but it came out in an uninterpretable slurred mush. She knew that she ought to be panicking, but even the panic seemed out of reach, locked away somewhere behind a misty grey curtain.

"Easy," came the familiar voice again, and then the source of the voice was turning, walking, carrying her somewhere away from her bed. Faith flailed uselessly with limbs that felt like heavy pudding.

"What did you do to me?" she wanted to ask. It came out as "Wuh-oo-oo-ee?"

The owner of the voice paused, shifting his grip so that more of her weight rested against his chest, her forehead lolling limply against his shoulder. A doorknob rattled, and then the Slayer shivered as cool fall air rushed over her skin.

"Sorry," the voice said, a hair slurred itself and nowhere near apologetic.

There was another shifting of weight and a creaky door opening. Next thing she knew, the owner of the arms and the voice was setting her down, pushing and shoving her onto what felt like leather upholstery. The Slayer's traitorous eyes still would not open. With a firm click, someone secured a seat belt around her hips. A heavy jacket dropped onto her legs, and then the door closed.

Faith lay in the back seat, drowsy and confused, for several more minutes, until a trunk slammed closed somewhere not too far from her head. Shortly thereafter, one of the car doors opened, and the vehicle dipped slightly as someone got in.

"Sorry about this," the voice apologized for a second time, sounding a fraction sincerer than it had during its first apology. With a gentle rumble, the car fired to life and began reversing. The movement knocked Faith against the back of the seat and jammed an unforgiving belt buckle into the back of her thigh.

Gathering as much concentration as she could, the Slayer focused everything she had on getting one short sentence out. "Een, M'a frak . . .king ill oo."

"Sure, Faith," was the voice's semi-amused response. "You can frak me all you want."

Irritation vied with fury, but both lost out to whatever fog was occluding her mind and keeping her from moving her body.

_I'll kill him,_ thought Faith, already beginning to drift off to the hypnotic motion of the car and the purr of the engine. _I will _kill_ him. Just as soon as I wake up._


	4. Chapter 4

**September 14th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 9:30 a.m**

Hotch stared through the one-way window at the tall man in the orange jumpsuit slumped at the interrogation table. According to the officials at the Polk County Jail who had anxiously greeted him earlier that morning, Samuel Winchester had not given anyone any trouble when he was brought in. Despite the constant mumbling to himself, he had managed to obey when asked to strip, squat, cough, and put on the regulation prison jumpsuit.

Glancing down at the sheet of paper in front of him, Aaron reviewed some of his additional notes. Winchester had not had too much on him when he created a disturbance at that Nebraska McDonald's. The skeletal inventory skittered down the page in Hotch's hand: a backpack; a laptop; two sets of jeans and long-sleeved button-up shirt;, a toothbrush and a shaving kit; a semi-automatic pistol; and a jagged knife with what appeared to be some kind of ancient runes stamped into the blade. In his pockets, he carried a wallet, a handful of fake IDs, and a cell phone.

Reid had taken possession of the computer and the phone and had scurried away with them to the empty room next to the Warden's office where the BAU team had set up. His next task was to configure a remote link to the phone and computer so that Garcia could access (read: hack) into them and work her magic. JJ and Morgan were currently debriefing the Nebraska and Iowa officials on the exact specifics of Winchester's behavior on the way over to Des Moines in what Aaron was sure would be extra painstaking detail. That left Prentiss and Rossi to hover over Hotchner's rather-tall shoulders as they all peered through the glass, intent on the figure of Samuel Winchester.

"He looks almost taller in person," whispered Emily, as if she had forgotten that the glass was sound-proof.

Aaron understood the urge to whisper. It was like seeing Santa Claus or getting real camera footage of Bigfoot or finally harpooning Moby Dick. Until a few days ago, the Winchesters had been dead. Yesterday, they had died again. And now here was Sam Winchester in front of them, alive and breathing, and, if not rational, at least capable of speech.

"Who are you thinking should talk to him first?" asked Rossi.

"I will," said Hotch. "He'll likely be confrontational to start out. I want the two of you in here to contribute your observations as to his body language and mental status. Then, once we review whatever intelligence we're able to acquire from this session, I want to send JJ in with more tailored questions. She's young, blonde, female – close enough in physical appearance to Jessica More, the girlfriend he lived with when he was at Stanford, before he joined back up with his brother and everything escalated."

The others nodded in agreement. As plans went, it was well thought out.

"Do you think Jessica Moore's death was a trigger, then?" Rossi prompted, using his teaching voice.

"How could it not be?" replied Hotch a little abruptly, never once taking his eyes off the man at the table. He was not a student at Quantico attending a lecture. "Unless -"

"Unless her death was not a trigger," Prentiss mused. "She also could have been the first victim for Sam Winchester as an adult."

Dave snapped his fingers in satisfaction that she had gotten it. "Exactly." He turned back to Hotch. "You have your line of questioning figured out?"

"Mostly. That's why I wanted you two in here. Prentiss, you and Morgan started on the profile for Lehane. Rossi, you examined the spree-killing trail. Any suggestions?"

"If I were you," said Emily thoughtfully, "I would focus on the wedge that Lehane must have driven in between the brothers. We don't have any documented confirmation of their interactions prior to this week, but I can't imagine that Sam would have been thrilled to make room in his relationship with his brother for someone as volatile as Faith Lehane."

"I think that's wise," Rossi nodded. "If you look at the previous incidents, Lehane was not present for the first few. Then suddenly, she shows up on tape, and is seen kissing Dean Winchester. Next, instead of carrying out another shoot-out in Ankeny, they are captured by police and are forced to attempt to break themselves out. Now, police found Sam all on his own."

"Do you think the other two are dead, then?"

"I doubt it," said Prentiss. "I doubt that any schism could cause one Winchester to kill the other. He might kill Lehane, maybe, if he grew sufficiently jealous of her claim on his brother, but Sam would never intentionally kill Dean."

"Intentionally," Rossi emphasized, his dark eyebrows furrowing. "In a moment of passion . . ." He raised his hands as if to suggest that anything might be possible.

Deep down, Aaron agreed with the possibility. The addition of a third partner might be enough to send either brother over the edge. And Sam's abnormal mental state was consistent with extreme trauma. Still, he did not think it was the likeliest explanation. "Be that as it may, Dave, our first priority must be determining their whereabouts. Until we have both Winchesters and Lehane in custody, there remains a significant threat to public safety." He straightened his suit jacket and adjusted his earpiece. "Thank you for your advice. I'm going in."

* * *

**September 14th, 2012, Just West of Sioux City, Iowa, 10:00 a.m.**

"I'm gonna kill you," growled Faith when she finally woke six hours later, when there was nothing left of whatever somebody had dosed her with save for dry mouth, a migraine, and the homicidal need to shove that person face first into a wood chipper. Forcing open her heavy eyelids, she was far from pleased to find herself in the backseat of the Acadian, half on the upholstery, half in the floorboard, wearing nothing more than short shorts and a tank top beneath Dean's leather jacket.

The Slayer tugged the jacket up from where it was laying across her legs and shoved her arms through the sleeves. Then she crawled over the console into the front seat, punching Dean solidly in the stomach by way of greeting as she went.

"Ouch," grimaced the hunter, doubling up as much as he could while still keeping one eye on the road and the Acadian more or less centered in its lane.

"What the hell was that?" the woman demanded. She buckled her seatbelt and wondered what the best way would be to murder a driver without crashing the car. "You drugged me." Her tone was sour with anger and disbelief.

"We need to find Sam."

The Slayer's eyes narrowed. "I thought you said that what's gone is gone and done is done." When the man did not reply, she added suspiciously, "How the hell are you supposed to find him, anyway?"

Dean did not even have the decency to look ashamed of himself. "I downloaded a tracer into his laptop a few weeks ago. After he ran off from Whitefish. After – "

"After Bozeman," Faith concluded. She leaned her head against the welcome chill of the window glass. Her entire body felt as though it were made of expired cottage cheese – lumpy, clumpy, and about to dissolve into a thin, gruesome whey. "Why the hell did you drug me?" she demanded. "I would have come with you." Protesting and railing at his stupidity, maybe, but she would have gone.

"I was drunk."

"Still doesn't make drugging me a good idea."

"I – I wasn't thinking too great."

"Clearly." That much, at least, was obvious all the way from the International Space Station.

"Sorry."

Faith's mouth twisted. "Are you, though? Because I've got like at least five hundred hours in interpreting passive-aggressive Winchester into real human speak, and that did not sound at all sorry."

Once again, Dean deflected. "Sam needs me," he said and then repeated himself. "He – he needs me."

The Slayer's brown eyes narrowed even further, to a matching pair of dark squints. She sniffed loudly, sorting out old, stale beer from metallic Everclear from cheap whiskey. "You're still drunk, aren't you? And not just that -" she stared at his pupils with growing fury. "_Oh_, _my_ _god_. You're high."

"Might be."

Nearly vibrating with rage, the woman gritted her teeth. "What did you take?"

"Whatever there was in my bag – and yours."

"Oh, God," said Faith. Even without knowing what he had been packing, that was a lot of drugs. It was a miracle that he was still awake and driving. Even more so when she considered that his guardian angel had been KIA months ago after binge-eating Leviathans. "You need to pull over and let me drive. Please. Before you crash and frakking murder us."

And then I'm going to murder you, she added in the depths of her mind where he could not hear her.

"No. We're going to look for Sam."

Faith's cell phone buzzed. It was a text message from Becka, complete with a half-blurry picture of her television screen. She read the caption on the screen and suppressed a wince. Their situation had just gone from bad to worse.

"Dammit all to hell," swore the Slayer out loud. "Dean, you need to pull over. Now. Finding your brother just got a whole hell of a lot more complicated."

"What do you mean, complicated?" demanded Dean, his voice and expression growing ugly with a combination of anger and worry. He jerked the wheel to the right as he stared at her.

The Slayer took a moment to look directly back into his reddened green eyes and their dilated pupils, all the while doing some frantic calculations in her head. They were going about fifty miles an hour on a twisty, narrow back road, and Dean's driving was erratic enough as it was. She did not want to risk the explosion that would result if she showed him the text that Becka had sent – that national news networks were reporting that the FBI had Sam Winchester in their custody and continued looking for his accomplices. Migraine notwithstanding, Faith had no particular desire to die today.

"Pull over," she repeated, keeping her voice calm and quietly unbuckling her seatbelt.

Dean shook his head mulishly. "No. Tell me."

Faith waited for a straight-sh stretch of road before saying, "I can't do that, Dean," and making her move. The Acadian wasn't the roomiest of cars, but she made do.

First, the Slayer lashed out with her closed left fist, catching the hunter on the chin. The blow snapped his head to the side and knocked him unconscious. Simultaneously, Faith grabbed the wheel with her right hand. As the man's body slumped, limp and unresponsive, against the driver's seat upholstery, she scooted across the leather middle seat.

Scrambling her way into the hunter's lap, Faith shoved his jeans-clad legs out of the way with her knees, then scooted to the edge of the seat in order to reach the gas pedal and the brake. Forever grateful that this model had an automatic transmission, the woman slowed down to about forty miles per hour.

At the first right-sided turn-off that she saw, Faith pulled over. She drove down a bumpy gravel road until she found an even bumpier, apparently deserted drive that led towards a currently-deserted power station. Pulling onto the pothole-filled drive, the Slayer finally shifted into park, pushed open the car door, and maneuvered Dean out of the front seat and onto the ground.

When he reached the dirt, the hunter groaned, slowly coming to. Faith tugged his leather jacket closer around her shoulders and popped the trunk. Rifling through the temporary arsenal in the back of the Acadian, she finally found a set of zip-ties in a crumpled up paper bag. Guilt-free, the woman secured first Dean's wrists and then his ankles. She wrestled the half-conscious man into the backseat of the Acadian.

Returning to the trunk, Faith opened her backpack and changed clothes. The Powers That Be, while constantly frakking with her life, occasionally had the grace to send small mercies her way. Even when high, Dean was conscientious about not leaving traces of themselves in hotel rooms, and he had brought the boots and jeans that she had forgotten to repack the night before. Once dressed, she searched through his bag as well as her own in an attempt to discern what exactly he had taken.

The list of possibilities was nearly endless. Faith herself always carried something of a mobile pharmacy in her toiletry bag – beyond the usual ibuprofen, tylenol, immodium, and various allergy meds (just in case. Nothing was worse when tracking down something nasty with fangs than an inopportune sneeze), she also had benzos for insomnia, amphetamines for when she was sleep-deprived but still needed to be at the top of her Slaying game, and some MDMA that she had confiscated from one of the baby Slayers out in California the week before.

You didn't need Molly to take out a Fook Beast, and while Faith was as down to party as almost any Slayer out there, she was also firmly against partying when there were monsters trying to eat you. Recreational substances were all well and good, but they had a time and a place. Running from Fook Beasts was neither that time nor that place.

"Dammit, Dean," sighed Faith. The MDMA, the stimulants and the benzodiazepines were all missing from her bag. Even without being able to tell what he might have taken from his own private stash, that was already a bad combination of drugs to be on.

"Sh-t," exhaled the Slayer, reflecting that if Dean was still high, then he must have taken an additional something fairly recently.

Faith sighed again, her glare burning a hole in the steel of the rear bumper, and she weighed warring priorities. They needed to bust Sam out of whatever hole the Feds were squirreling him away in – that went without saying. But they also needed to not get caught in the meantime, and this intoxicated version of Dean was too unreliable and impulsive to even plan a rescue mission with, much less do anything beyond plan.

Ultimately, she thought, the first thing that they truly needed was someplace to hole up in while Dean came down from his magical mystery tour.

She got back behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Alright, then. Abandoned house it was. And if she needed to pull over and kick his ass somewhere along the way, well, Faith was just a-okay with that.

* * *

**September 14th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 9:45 a.m.**

Supervisory Special Agent Hotchner opened the door to the interrogation room and walked inside. As the hinges creaked, the man at the table lifted his head. Tangled strands of chestnut brown hair, reaching nearly to his shoulders in the back, fell away from his face as he looked up with bleary hazel eyes to watch the FBI agent.

Pulling out the chair on the opposite side of the table, Hotch sat. He had not bothered to bring a folder of notes in with him for three reasons. One, because he had been studying up on Sam Winchester and his brother for the last three days straight. Two, he preferred the slight edge of intimidation that knowing every fact without having to rely on paper gave him. Three, because it would have taken an industrial-strength dolly or a sturdy Shetland pony to carry all the Winchester-related notes in anyway.

Aaron cleared his throat. "Ehem. Good morning, Sam. My name is Agent Hotchner. I work for the FBI. I have some questions for you."

Winchester blinked, and his eyes seemed to clear somewhat. "He said you'd say that."

Hotch resisted the urge to glance around the room to make sure that they were alone. He already knew that they were alone. "Who told you that, Sam?" he asked in a friendly voice. "Was it Dean?"

After staring at him for a long moment, as if memorizing each and every one of Hotchner's features, Sam Winchester shook his head with a heavy air of finality. He looked down to his wrists, handcuffed and chained to the metal table, then said, "No."

"Where is Dean?" asked Hotchner, keeping his tone easy and light. Since Winchester did not seem in the mood to be talkative, he decided to get straight to the heart of things.

Winchester seemed unable to get through an entire sentence. He would begin to speak, then pause and grimace, and then begin with something else. "I'm not – I don't – I don't know."

"Is he with Faith Lehane?"

The corners of the man's mouth twitched downwards. Hotch took that as a good sign and pressed that line of questioning.

"Sam, how did your brother meet Faith Lehane?"

The man did not reply, merely continued to stare at his hands. He interlocked his fingers and ran the pad of one thumb over the back of the other.

"Sam, did your brother leave you to be with Faith?"

Still nothing.

"Sam – "

Winchester glanced up. His hazel eyes were dark with some intense emotion that Hotchner couldn't quite identify. It might have been fury; it might have been fear. "He thinks you should leave," he said so softly and so venomously that it was almost a hiss.

"Who thinks I should leave, Sam?"

"Lucifer," he answered, the 'c' long and sibilant.

Hotchner's brow furrowed. "By Lucifer, do you mean – "

"That's right." For the first time, Sam Winchester smiled. "The Devil."


	5. Chapter 5

**September 14th, 2012, Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2:28 p.m.**

"Oh, God."

Dean woke to a feeling of death. He was at once freezing, chilled to the bone and yet drenched in sweat. His hands and feet were shaking so badly that the rhythmic tapping of his boot toes against some floor sounded like a spastic Shirley Temple audition. He was laying on something twisted and uncomfortable, and sharp bits of metal were poking him in the side and shoulder. Opening his eyes, the man rolled to the edge of the broken mattress, and promptly puked his guts out onto the dirt floor of – what was this? A barn?

When he finally stopped retching, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pushed himself up onto the edge of the mattress until he was half-propped up on his elbow. He looked around the room, and his earlier suspicions were confirmed.

It was either a very small barn or a very large shed, as the mattress was surrounded with old gardening implements – rakes, hoes, shovels, what looked like a hand-tiller, and a rusty array of axes, hatchets, and saws. Along with the ringing in his ears and his growing headache, he felt an uncomfortable sense of foreboding.

_Sh-t,_ he thought, hearing someone else breathing. Dean cast his eyes around wildly, half-expecting to see a hillbilly with only half of his teeth leering at him from one of the dark corners of the shed.

The sight that greeted him was almost worse. Seated on a bucket a few feet from the head of the mattress was the Slayer, still wearing his leather jacket and glaring at him with brown eyes like thunder. She unscrewed the cap on a plastic water bottle and extended it to him. "Here."

"What's – " Dean's memory was more than a little scrambled at the moment. He took a sip of the water and struggled to choke it down. His mouth tasted like a mixture of vomit and the sewer, with a little bit of Hell thrown in. "What's going on?"

Her gaze remaining harsh, Faith put the cap back on the water bottle."You're comin' down, babe," she said with a complete lack of sympathy. "Comin' down hard. This is why we don't mix downers, uppers, alcohol, and E."

"I didn't -" The hunter started to defend himself.

"Oh, you did, cowboy," the Slayer interrupted to assure him. "You did." She picked up a second water bottle, swished some of it around in her mouth, and then spat it onto the dirt floor. "My whole stash's gone," said Faith, dancing a fine line between light and menacing. "So's yours. I don't know what exactly you were keeping in those little orange bottles in your bag, but they're all empty. We're actually pretty lucky, you know."

"What?"

She kept her tone level, but the accusation in her eyes was nothing short of scalding as she counted off the potential disasters one by one on her fingers. "You could've crashed the car, driving with that much crap in your system. Not to mention inciting an insane desire for punching in yours truly." That made two. "Plus, you could've gotten us caught by the police – or the Leviathans. We could be big snappy teeth chow by now. You could've killed us. And, oh, yeah, you fricking drugged me," she added, tapping the thumb of her second hand.

Leaning forward, she mused, "Almost seems like you're self-destructing. Like Sam split, so now you're just gonna implode and do everything stupid all because your baby brother ran off. You know better than that. You are better than that. Or, I dunno, at least I thought you were."

That stung. He attempted to protest, "Faith -"

The Slayer rolled her eyes and threw a motor-oil stained cotton rag at him. "Shut up and wipe your face. I'm not talking to you until you're sober."

Dean used the piece of cloth to clear the vomit off of his mouth and chin, then tossed it down onto a patch of clean-ish dirt and objected, "I am sober -"

She cut him off. "Comin' down and down ain't the same thing, handsome. Not by a long shot."

Choosing not to fight a losing battle, the hunter shut his eyes. "It's really cold."

"That's the dysregulation of your autonomic nervous system that happens when you screw around with pills."

Barely half of those words made any sense to him. "What?"

"Pfff," Faith snorted in disbelief. "Really? Like you've never read about withdrawal symptoms on the internet? Come on, kid. I know you better than that. Besides, everyone reads up on withdrawal symptoms on the internet, if they've got more than two brain cells to rub together. Which you might not after your little fun times last night," she finished spitefully.

There was no way that Dean could manage a decent comeback to that, not with the "dysregulation of his autonomic nervous system" or whatever that bit of pseudo-scientific babble had been. Instead, he waited for a moment and then grumbled, "It's still cold."

"Here." There was a rustle, and then a scratchy blanket was draped over him. It smelled a lot like old sweat and horse – or old horse sweat. Dean's nausea surged. This might actually be worse than the chill.

"Oh, G-d." He rolled to the other side of the mattress and vomited for a second time.

"That's it," said Faith, sounding disturbingly satisfied with his misery. "Get it out, Winchester. Just puke it all out."

* * *

**September 14th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 5:30 p.m.**

To the team's great surprise and even greater dismay, Sam Winchester did not say another word throughout the entire rest of the afternoon. Sending JJ in had been supremely unproductive. Winchester had glanced at her briefly, blinked once, and then stared down at the table for the remainder of her visit, never once speaking.

Only adding to their frustration was the fact that although there were moments when he was alone in the interrogation room and appeared to be mouthing words to himself, nothing was ever audible. Worse, his mouth and facial expressions twisted so much when he spoke that even Reid was unable to make anything out.

And to make matters a step of worseness beyond that, the encryption on his laptop was, as Garcia put it, "as if next-gen military science and CIA paranoia had had a love child, and that love child had gone to tin-foil-hat private school." It had taken her and several additional analysts most of the day to crack it. Once they managed to break through the encryption, the hard drive began spinning faster and faster, whirring inside its casing, until it overheated, frying the entire computer before any data retrieval could take place.

Sam Winchester's cell phone was similarly useless. It was a burner phone that had been purchased and activated half an hour before the Nebraska state police picked him up. There were no texts and no call history, and he had paid in cash.

"What do you want to do next, boss?" asked Morgan after several incredibly frustrating hours of chasing their tails and going nowhere. The team was once again huddled in the observation room, watching Winchester hold an inaudible conversation with the empty air to his left. "We don't know where the others are – or if they are even alive. And, Hotch, honestly, given the state he's in, I think there's a good chance that Sam could have murdered his brother."

Hotchner frowned. "You may be right," he admitted. "But until we know for sure, I don't know that he did it."

"Agreed," said Reid, unnecessarily raising his hand in support.

"So," exhaled Prentiss, her dark gaze fixed on the prisoner. "What next?"

"If Sam won't – or can't – tell us how to find Dean, we may need to ask Dean to come to us. JJ?"

"Sir?"

"It's time for that press conference."

* * *

**September 14th, 2012, Somewhere Cold and Depressing and Smelly, 6:00 p.m.**

It was an absolutely horrible afternoon and evening that followed. Dean alternated between sleeping fitfully and waking with full-body chills, only to throw up again. And again. And again.

Every time he woke, the Slayer was still there, sitting on her bucket, watching him. Sometimes she leaned back against the wall, her eyes half-lidded in sleepy surveillance. Other times, she leaned forward, elbows propped on knees, her expression a mix of pity and schadenfreude.

Around seven-thirty, it grew completely dark in the shack. Faith refused to turn on her flashlight for anything except to shovel away the vomit-soaked dirt and bury it in the farthest corner of the little shed. Dean was far too discombobulated to ask her what the point of it all was. He figured that when she decided he deserved to know, she would tell him.

As the effects of last night's bender continued to wear off, he continued to realize just how much the Slayer was justified in wanting him to suffer. Had the roles been reversed, he probably would have been putting her through a similar ordeal.

About half an hour later, the puking finally stopped. The Slayer waited another hour before giving him a packaged peanut butter and jelly sandwich that she must have gotten from a gas station somewhere. She then allowed him two ibuprofen and half a bottle of water for his headache and the full-body muscle aches that were now setting in.

"What do we say?" she asked in a sickly-sweet voice as Dean forced himself to go slow on the water and not gulp it all down at once.

"I'm sorry," said Dean in a hoarse whisper.

"Sorry for what?"

Oh, hell. She was really going to draw this out. The hunter exhaled, aware that his breath must be absolutely terrible. Still, brushing his teeth would have to wait until morning. Dean didn't think he could move to use the bathroom, much less scrub the taste of death out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, "for acting like an idiot."

"And?"

"For putting stuff in your water and not telling you about it."

"And?"

His brain ached. "For mixing meds and driving high."

"_And?_"

"There's something else?"

"No, not really. That's about it." Faith smiled, and the white of her teeth glinted in the faint moonlight streaming through the holes in the shed roof.

"Can we go now?" asked Dean, pulling the smelly horse blanket up over his shoulder. Although the chills had mostly passed, the air was growing colder, and he was more than a little worried about freezing if they spent the entire night here.

The Slayer shook her head. "No. We're fugitives on the run."

"Worse than we were last night? Last night we were in that motel."

"Way worse. The search is back on – I guess our little ruse in Ankeny didn't fool anyone."

"How?"

"I dunno," lied Faith, crossing her left big toe over her second toe so that it did not really count as a lie. "Probably something about the missing heads?"

"Dammit," swore Dean. "Can you – are you still watching that tracer on my phone? Where's – where's Sam?"

"You want to go get him now?"

There was something off about the Slayer's tone, but Dean couldn't quite make out what it was. It might be just residual pissy-ness about the whole drugging her to rescue his brother thing, but with Faith, he could only tell the reason behind her bad moods about eighty-five percent of the time. After the last twenty-four hours, he had a funny feeling that making assumptions would do him no favors here.

"What is it?" he asked, pushing himself up on his elbow enough to get a good look at her in the semi-darkness. "What's wrong?"

She stared at him for an uncomfortably long silence before saying, "Dean, you trust me, yeah?"

"Ye-ah," he said slowly. That was a terrible way to answer a question, and he knew that she knew it. Then again, they were both answering questions terribly tonight. "C'mon, Boston. Tell me what's going on."

"There's been a bit of a . . . complication with your brother."

"_What?_" he demanded.

Rushing to reassure him, Faith blurted, "He's safe. Physically, I think he's about as safe as he can be without either one of us or Bobby right beside him."

The hunter blinked several times. "He get hospitalized or something?"

"Something like that."

"The Leviathans – "

"I know, I know," said Faith quickly. "First thing in the morning, we'll go get him. But you only just stopped having the shakes, and I don't think either of us is exactly in top fighting condition at the moment."

Dean scoffed. "Like that ever stopped us before -"

"_And_," she continued forcefully, "we're out of stims, since somebody decided to take every single amphetamine we had."

"That would be me, wouldn't it?" It was a rhetorical question.

"Yes, dumbass. That would be you."

"So -"

"So we're staying here tonight. Scoot over."

Once again, Dean rolled to the edge of the mattress. This time, thankfully it was for the purpose of allowing the Slayer to join him under the old blanket rather than to say hello to yesterday's lunch yet again.

Faith pressed herself against his back, and one of her arms draped over his side and stomach. The embrace was loose at first and then grew tighter as she pulled him close. Already, the hunter was grateful for the extra warmth. It was going to be a long, cold night.

"Hey," he said after a few moments of quiet.

"Hmm?" The mumbled response vibrated against his shoulder blade.

"I know I screwed up. I really am sorry."

She untucked her chin from the slightly warmer space between his shoulder and the edge of the blanket long enough to reply, "I know. Now please shut up so we can both get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be here soon enough, and with our luck, it's gonna be a bitch."

"Sam's okay, though?" he pressed. "You promise?"

There was only a second's hesitation before she pressed her forehead back against him and murmured, "I promise."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. Bit of a crazy week. Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading, commenting, subscribing, and leaving kudos!!

* * *

**September 15th, 2012, Southern South Dakota, 6:15 a.m.**

Faint sunlight streaming through gaps in old wooden boards and the uncomfortable heat of another person lying too close against his back woke Dean. Groggy, he twisted his neck around until he could see and recognize the mass of thick brunette hair covering the Cousin-It wannabe beside him. "Where are we?" he asked, elbowing the woman gently to rouse her.

There came an unholy groan, vaguely reminiscent of the torments of Hell, and then Faith sat up and pushed her unruly hair out of her face. "Edge of South Dakota, not too far from Sioux Falls," she told him, her lips twitching downwards in a brief twinge of guilt.

Dean's insides twinged uncomfortably at the oblique reminder of the fact that Bobby's place, one of the few stalwarts of his post-Lawrence childhood and adolescence, was a retreat no longer. Damn Leviathans.

"What happened?" he wondered, pushing those thoughts aside. As his mind cleared, the man still struggled to put yesterday into a cohesive mental framework. He remembered fragments – mostly of him withdrawing from something – but not enough to fill in the entire day.

Faith told him that, too.

Swinging his legs over the short lip of the mattress, Dean sat. He eyed the boots that were still on his feet and grunted," Where's Sam?"

At this, another flash of guilt danced across the Slayer's face. "There's something you need to watch."

She crawled over the top of the mattress until she could sit cross-legged beside him atop the rusty springs, wearing the same clothes from yesterday and a partially apologetic expression. "I'm sorry about this," she murmured, extending her phone so that they could both look at the screen.

Shoulders and elbows knocking into each other, they watched a video that someone had uploaded to an internet news site, the CNN logo blazoned across the bottom left corner. It was a recording of what looked like a press conference outside a prison. Big block letters on the building labeled it as the Polk County Jail.

"Where's that?" Dean wondered.

"Des Moines," replied Faith shortly. "I looked it up. Now shush and watch."

A blond woman in a black suit with a powder blue blouse beneath it was announcing to a concerned-looking pack of microphone-laden reporters that, "Yes, that is correct. Sam Winchester is in federal custody."

Dean made a sharp noise, as if he had been punched in the gut. The Slayer shot him a wary glance but continued playing the video.

The FBI agent went on to say, "We are still searching for his brother, Dean Winchester, and their known associate, Faith Lehane."

Unflattering mugshots of the two of them flashed up onto the sides of the screen as she spoke.

"Is that _Blue Steel_?" Faith wanted to know, trying to inject a little levity into the moment before Dean decided to strangle her. "Are you – were you having a Zoolander moment?"

He did not take the bait. "At least I don't look like a homicidal baby," Dean retorted instead. "What were you – twelve?"

"Eighteen."

"You don't look so good."

"Eighteen was a rough year."

Faith un-paused the video, and they continued watching. The blonde woman had looked up from her written statement and was now addressing the cameras directly. "We have a national tip line set up, and the number will be on the bottom of your screens. Please, _please_ call in if you have knowledge of either of these fugitives. Again, Lehane and Winchester should be considered armed, dangerous, and incredibly volatile."

"Your _breath's_ volatile," Dean muttered, and for the second time that morning, his elbow collided painfully with Faith's ribs.

The woman said nothing. He was probably right.

"We do not advise approaching them under any circumstances," warned the blonde FBI agent. "If you believe you have identified the fugitives, call law enforcement, report to the tip line, but do not, I repeat, do _not_ approach."

"Damn." The Slayer paused the video again. "I didn't realize they were gonna be that intense about this."

"They've got Sam," said Dean robotically.

"Yeah." Faith exhaled and looked down at her own Doc Martens. "I know."

"You knew last night?" The roboticism continued.

"Yeah."

"You didn't tell me?"

Shifting her weight from one haunch to the other uncomfortably, Faith justified her decisions, "You were in no shape to be driving, much less saddling up and going to the rescue."

The look he gave her was angry and understanding and tortured all at once. "Faith," he said, agonized, "there could be Leviathans."

"I know," she agreed with him. "But between keeping two of us safe and putting all three of us in danger – I made the best call that I could."

Dean mulled this over for a moment. Then he rose to his feet. "O-kay. Let's get back on the road. Sam needs us.'

"Yeah. We're gonna need to ditch the car, find a new one."

It was Dean's turn to say, "I know." He felt relieved at the thought of getting rid of the Acadian. It was not in any way his favorite type of ride. Almost anything besides a minivan would be a major improvement. "Just leave it to me."

* * *

They drove in silence for what felt like hours. Dean kept to the backroads, a creased and highlighted atlas spread open over his knees. Faith couldn't quite tell if he was furious with her for keeping the news of Sam's imprisonment from him or furious with himself for getting so high that Faith had been able to manage keeping something that crucial a secret. But mostly, he just exuded an aura of nonspecific extra-pissed-offness.

That was all right. The Slayer was more than used to dealing with an angry Winchester. She sat tall in the shotgun seat, keeping her eyes peeled for an abandoned gas station, a closed junkyard, or any place secluded enough that it might have food for sale and might not have a television. The Leviathans had done them no favors on the national surveillance front.

As she watched, Faith tumbled half a dozen assorted attack plans over and over in the back of her mind. It had been a while since she busted into a major county jail, and she knew it would be a good deal harder than beheading a Leviathan doppleganger and busting out of some country set-up.

No, the woman thought with a glance at Dean's iron-set jawline and general don't-talk-to-me-if-you-want-to-keep-your-head-attached-to-your-body vibe, this was another type of game entirely.

For half a second, she toyed with the idea of texting Andrew, asking him for a good Dungeons and Dragons solution to their current problem, and then trying to see if there was a Slayer way or a witchy way to make it viable – invisibility or teleporting or . . . wait . . . what had that last one been? Faith sent a furtive text message and continued her plotting.

Four hours in, Dean pulled over without a word. He turned down a dirt track into a stand of trees, got out of the car jerkily, and stomped away to relieve himself. When he came back, it was Faith's turn. Peeing in the woods required a damn sight more coordination and tree cover for a woman than it did for a man, but she managed, and soon enough they were off on the road again.

Around hour five, the hunter relented. "You got any thoughts on Des Moines?"

"A few," said Faith neutrally, glad that at least he was talking again, even if his tone was so gruff that it reminded her of her brief encounters with his father. "You?"

"One or two. I keep – keep thinking this would be easier if we had, uh, if Castiel were here." Dean's suddenly even tone matched hers, but Faith could hear the strain underneath it.

"Angel-portation?" she hazarded instead of outright commenting on the Castiel name-drop. Good thing she had gone ahead and texted Willow and a few other players, then. If he was stuck at missing his angel buddy, she might need to do the major plan envisioning mood board on this one.

"You're an idiot," said Dean, although the corners of his mouth turned up just a tiny bit.

Faith considered this as much of a victory as she was likely to get at the moment. "Mmhmm."

"Go on, then."

"Huh?"

"Spill it. Whatever genius idea you've been plotting for the last five hours."

"It's not – "

"Spill."

"Okay, then. I've got an idea. I think – if we want to do this the fast way – I think we should call in some of the big guns. And we're gonna need to use magic. Lots of it."

Faith explained her idea briefly while Dean continued to pull faces, each one grimmer than the last. Despite working with Willow in the past, despite using spells and rituals and incantations all the time on his own or with Sam, Dean Winchester still had an almost irrationally strong dislike of witches and witchcraft. Which Faith could understand, up to a point. Unfortunately, they had passed that point sometime the day before yesterday.

"I don't like it," the hunter announced unnecessarily when she had finished. His pinched frown and the furrows crossing his forehead had conveyed that particular message a solid sixty seconds earlier. Exhaling, he half-surrendered, "But let's look into it. I was thinking something more like . . ."

* * *

**September 15th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 7:00 a.m.**

"They're all watching you, you know," hissed the voice of the Devil in his ear as Sam unzipped the front of the orange jumpsuit he had been forced into and tried to pee into the tiny toilet in his cell with its two inches of water in the bottom.

Not enough toilet water to drown himself in – or, at least, not quickly enough before the FBI and state police and however else was on the other side of the dark camera lens up in the top righthand corner of his cell. Not that Sam Winchester wanted to drown himself. That had simply been another "helpful" suggestion from the demon in his ear.

Sam finished, zipped back up, and turned to his left, where the Devil was staring at him and using one of this thick fingernails to scratch ineffectively at a thick rusty greenish booger dangling from his nose.

"Shut up," said Sam. He clenched his hand until his nails dug into his palm. _Pain is real,_ he reminded himself, remember his older brother's words a few months prior._ The pain is real. Use it to figure out what else is, too._

He almost wished that he could hear Dean instead of Lucifer, but even if he did, it would probably just be Lucifer masquerading as his brother again. It would not be the first time. Or the fifth. Or the fifteenth. Or even the fiftieth.

"Missing me?" As if the Devil could read his thoughts, it was Dean's voice and now Dean sitting on the lumpy jail cot instead of Lucifer's previous vessel with its sandy hair, wide nose, and freckled face.

"Go away," said Sam more fervently, tightening his grip. His blunted nails broke the skin, but he kept pressing, harder and harder, until the room became quiet and he was left alone in the prison cell.

The hunter collapsed onto the cot, weak-limbed and sweaty. He buried his face in his hands and pressed his bloodied palms against his eye sockets. For a brief moment, he was on his own. For a brief moment, the Devil had left him alone with his thoughts, and he could start to piece together the vague details of his desperate situation.

He was reasonably sure that he had not said anything too damning in the interrogation room with the FBI. At least, he did not think he had been lucid enough to string more than one full sentence together. He did not remember which specific questions the stern agents had asked him, but he did remember confusion and panic and the growing look of disdain in the eyes of more than one federal employee. Lucifer had been there, and as ever when his broken mind enjoyed playing up the fragmentation between what was true and what was false, the Devil felt more real than anything else Sam could see. Hallucinations became reality and reality became nothing more than a whisper of a dream at the edge of his consciousness.

Still, Sam hoped like Hell that he had not said or done anything that would give his brother and Faith away. Although his anger endured, dulled to a bitter and unforgiving burn at the back of his throat, he did not want Dean in this trap any more than he wanted himself here, and even Lehane deserved more than to spend her days in a concrete box.

"That's the spirit." The woman herself appeared on the cot beside him, all dark red lipstick and revealing black latex, a leather riding crop in one hand. She snapped the crop down hard over Sam's leg, and he could feel a welt spring into being on his thigh.

"Hi there, honey," purred the Devil, wearing an even-more-sexed-up version of Sam's brother's already oversexed best friend. She rose up onto her knees, bringing her crimson mouth close to Sam's ear. "Looking for a little company?" she whispered, her breath hot against his skin.

"Go away." The man closed his eyes and covered them with his palms for a second time.

"But, baby," continued the Devil, far, far too close, as sharp taloned fingers pierced the skin of the hunter's wrist, "I'm bored. And I need you to help me with that."

Sam groaned. It was going to be a long day.

* * *

"He's -"

"Not acting any less crazy," said Hotch with a nod of agreement, pre-empting the rest of JJ's sentence.

"No."

They continued to stare at the screen as Samuel Winchester scrambled towards the other side of the cell in a rush to get away from . . . the sheer patch of nothing near the head of his bunk?

"I always thought the Winchesters were supposed to be the controlled kind of crazy," commented Morgan, his forehead wrinkling as he frowned.

Reid, the consummate expert, nodded his head. "They are."

"Maybe Dean's the one who keeps his little brother together?" JJ suggested.

"Doesn't match Henriksen's original reports." Prentiss joined the conversation, her hands tucked comfortably into the pockets of her dress slacks.

"Been four, five years since Henriksen," noted Aaron thoughtfluly. "A lot could've happened since then."

"I've been working on a new Winchester timeline," Reid mentioned helpfully.

"Good. Good. We got anything new on Lehane?"

"A bit, sir," answered Spencer. "And, uh, I don't think you're going to like it."

"Let's all meet by the warden's office in ten minutes. I don't think we'll get anything else out of Winchester tonight."

* * *

**Somewhere outside Des Moines, 5:00 p.m.**

"I'm still pissed," grumbled Dean.

"I know." _Tell me something new for a change,_ thought Faith.

After a full day of driving, only making stops for gas and at the place of one of Bobby's old hunter friends in northern Iowa, they finally found a rundown motor inn a few miles from the Polk County Jail. They left most of their things and the old Dodge that had replaced the Acadian in an abandoned junk yard two hours west of here.

If they ended up not being able to go back for it themselves, Dean would ask Bobby to ask somebody to either retrieve the car or burn it. Worst case scenario, they had agreed to call in Becka or Lily, an option that Faith preferred to avoid at all costs, given that the girls had never yet tangled with the law. Their records were as pristine as hers was tarnished, and she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible – whatever that took.

She had been the one to go inside and arrange for the motel room, all light eye makeup and soft pink lipstick beneath a ponytail and a faded The Ohio State University baseball cap. Room key in hand, she and Dean slunk in and spread their few remaining possessions out over the single lumpy queen bed and then showered as quickly as could be managed, Dean jumping in before Faith had even pulled the curtain back to step out.

There had been a brief exchange of elbows and fists in soft places and a threat to turn the water down to freezing before Faith extricated herself from the shower-thief and went to change.

"Stupid-head," she called at him, then wrapped her towel closer around her and stepped out of the bathroom.

* * *

**Thirty minutes later**

"You know this is a trap?"

Dean glanced up from re-packing his throwaway duffle to the Slayer, who had already worked her way through phase one of the plan and was now solidly onto phase two, sitting on the edge of the shitty motel bed in nothing but a pair of charcoal grey underwear and a too-thin black tank top, bra in her hands, carefully hooking safety pins along the underwire. Tearing his eyes away, the hunter swallowed stiffly. "'Course I do. We're just gonna out-trap them."

Faith snorted and then swore harshly as she pricked her thumb on one of the safety pins.

"Not sure how you're gonna get those out with your hands cuffed," observed Dean.

The woman huffed. "Which one of us spent three years in super max?" she said pointedly. Although if the plan went right, hopefully there would be no need for the pins. After Faith finished placing the fourth safety pin, she rose to her feet, lifting her tank top up past her belly button to buckle the bra back into place.

Which was a relief, Dean though, because now he could look at her without getting all red and distracted. He knew she must have been doing the whole almost topless thing on purpose, to get back at him for putting those bentos in her water glass two nights ago. Dean didn't regret that, not too much. It hadn't, perhaps, been his best move, but the alternative was to try knocking her out with a punch to the face, the way he did with Sammy. At the time, he had had a sinking feeling that it would be a lot harder to cold cock the Slayer than it was his baby brother.

A slight wrinkle deepening across her forehead, Faith ran her hands along the bases of the cups of her bra, drawing Dean's eyes right back to that area that he had been trying his level best not to stare at.

Glancing up, the woman smirked. "Enjoying the view?" she taunted.

"It ain't the worst I've seen."

Faith laughed. Apparently satisfied with her safety pin placement, the Slayer lifted a small throwing knife and a roll of duct tape off the bed and began taping the sheathed knife to the flat skin just to the right of her left hip bone, the top of the knife hilt barely even with the line of her underwear.

Once again, Dean had to force himself to look away in order to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing. Girls were hot. Shiny, sharp weapons were kinda hot. And a girl like Faith, taping herself up with shiny, sharp weapons like that? It was more than enough to make the hunter feel a little too warm under the collar.

Once their preparations were finished, Faith made one final call to California.

"Hey?" Buffy answered on the third ring.

"Hey."

"You, uh, still okay?" The blonde's tone was tentative. "I've been watching the news," she explained hurriedly.

"We're fine," Faith brushed the concern away quickly. In another time, when she wasn't quite so up against a wall of federales, she would have been touched. As it was, she was in a rush. "Willow there?"

Buffy understood at once. "Yeah, of course. I'll pass you over."

"Hello?"

"Hey, Will."

"Hi, Faith."

"We good to go?" Faith asked quickly, watching Dean stuff his third-favorite automatic pistol into the waistband of his jeans. "You promise this stuff will work?"

"It should. Are you sure about – "

The Slayer interrupted her before she could give voice to any more doubts. Faith was busy squashing down enough of her own doubts as it was. "It's the only way, isn't it?"

Willow made a soft noise of disagreement.

Faith countered that with, "Well, it's the only way I could think of. Unless we've got somebody in the FBI?"

"We don't," the red-haired witch said dejectedly.

"Well, then . . ."

"Be careful," Willow urged her. "Remember what I said about how much to take."

"Don't worry," reassured Faith with a confidence that was at least sixty-three percent feigned. "Dean an' me, we're good at improvising. I'll talk to you soon." She hung up and turned to the man in question.

The hunter raised an eyebrow. "You sure about this?" he said, a little less gruffly, giving her – _and them!_ – one last chance to back out.

Faith examined her reflection in the mirror and leaned in to pop a blackhead sitting impertinently on the tip of her nose. Satisfied, she glanced back to him and shrugged. "Like I told Red, unless you've got another idea . . . ?"

The man shook his head mutely. No, he had no other ideas. Not since they'd gone through all the possibilities that morning. Unlike his previous escapes, this time there would be no sympathetic warden or police officer or lawyer on the inside to count on. Just very high security and the intense scrutiny of Hoover's best and brightest, thanks to those goddammned Leviathans. The usual tricks would not be enough to slip the leash and rescue Sam. Not this time. And so he had capitulated to the Slayer's crazy convoluted plan involving far too many moving pieces.

By their admittedly poor calculus, it had the lowest chances of failure, and he was desperate. It was bad enough that the FBI had their mitts all over his kid brother, but if the Leviathans wormed their way back in and got close to Sam -

"Too bad we don't have a friendly shapeshifter," said Faith, repeating one of her less-useful ideas from earlier in the day.

"Yeah, too bad," Dean echoed sardonically. In his experience, full-grown shapeshifters - the kind that they would need - didn't come in friendly.

"If we had a demon friend, they could possess someone," mused the Slayer.

Dean rolled his eyes at her and repeated for the second time that day, "Possession is not the answer, Faith."

"Too bad," was the whispered response.

Together, they went to stand by the edge of the bed. Faith opened the cooler and withdrew a water bottle filled with rusty orange liquid, a concoction hastily thrown together that afternoon with Willow's advice and the contents of Bobby's friend's larder. The Slayer downed roughly two-thirds of its contents, and Dean drank what remained.

"Well," the hunter looked hard into her dark brown eyes, "let's go."

Faith bent to the side and started packing her bag, throwing in a few extra clothes and books that they had decided they could sacrifice. She strapped another knife to one hip and a revolver to the other. She zipped up the second duffel and then said, "Okay."

The Slayer allowed Dean to take her hand and drag her out into the waiting dusk towards their latest stolen junker car and the road to Des Moines.

She had seven hours until she died.


	7. Chapter 7

_Six hours earlier_

"No," said Dean forcefully, glancing away from the steering wheel just long enough to give the Slayer a thunderous, disbelieving glare. "There is no way in hell that that's gonna work. I am not going to do it."

"You want your brother back alive?" snapped Faith. She ceased texting, her thumbs poised frozen over the touch screen of her cell phone.

"You know I do."

"Then you're just gonna have to trust me. But don't worry," she added, once the look on his face had gone from truly glowering to only mildly displeased. "I've been thinking about this all night. I've got plans. People are moving. It's all going to work out. You just need to trust me."

* * *

_Now_

Much to Dean's ongoing surprise, Faith's not-so-brilliant "brilliant plan" had actually been less crazy than it sounded, once he made her walk him through the proposal step by step.

The preparations had involved calls to Buffy, Willow, Angel, an ex-vampire named Gunn ("How do they ex a vampire?" demanded Dean), and the two terrors that were Becka Viglione and Lily Price. And now here he was, nervous but trusting Faith, and ready to die if that was what it took to save his baby brother.

In the end, getting caught by the FBI was easy as breathing. Dean just opened a bottle of cheap booze, splashed some around his face and neck while Faith did the same to herself, and then they each took one big swig before pulling into the parking lot of a supermarket. The Slayer yanked her hair up into a ponytail while the hunter removed two automatic rifles from the trunk. His eyes were cold and arrogant as he passed her one of the weapons.

Faith gave him an exaggerated wink, and then they were striding into the Safeway, firing a sing-song stream of bullets into the air.

"Put your hands up and open the registers!" yelled Dean while Faith swung around from right to left, training her rifle on various employees and customers as she tried unsuccessfully to keep people from escaping or using their cellphones.

_Oops_, she mouthed to Dean, her brown eyes glinting, and then the woman fired angrily and purposelessly into a display of Coca Cola cases. Soda shot everywhere, fizzy and sticky.

In three minutes, the first police sirens sounded outside the Safeway. In ten minutes, they were surrounded, and someone with a megaphone was yelling for them to release the hostages and come out. And within thirty minutes, the FBI and a SWAT team stormed the supermarket, and the large open room devolved into chaos.

"Everyone stay calm!" bellowed a tall, dark-haired man in an FBI tactical vest.

No one listened, and everyone panicked. A half dozen SWAT team members formed a circle around the cash registers and began slowly closing in while the other half dozen escorted the shoppers and employees out the automatic glass doors of the Safeway.

As the circle grew tighter, Dean roared with convincing fury when he was tackled by a tall, brawny African American dude wearing another FBI vest. Faith heard a whisper of a footstep behind her and whirled, knocking the brunette FBI officer trying to put a gun to the back of her neck off of her officious ass and onto the concrete floor. Gunshots rang out from the closest SWAT officer, and a bullet grazed Faith's left shoulder.

Only then did the Slayer drop her gun and allow the SWAT team to cuff her. She followed the handcuffing officer almost meekly to the squad car where Brawny FBI Guy had just shoved Dean.

"Don't put them in together," the FBI man started to exclaim, but Faith had already slipped into the backseat, her uninjured shoulder bumping against Dean.

"Hey," she muttered, meeting his gaze quickly. He looked more or less okay. Sure, there was grocery store floor dust covering his shirt and a fresh bruise starting to materialize on his chin, but other than that, he was okay.

"You, Lehane, get out," the uniformed officer called at her.

Faith did not move, just shifted her weight even further into the car and closer to Dean.

"Out of the car!" ordered the FBI guy.

"Someone pull her out of there!" It was the first voice, the one that had told everyone to be calm, a male voice and one clearly used to command. This must be the big boss, for the other FBI agent backed up, deferring to him.

"Get him -" said somebody.

"Get her – " said somebody else.

"Did you pat them down?" demanded the new FBI leader man.

"No," said a uniformed officer.

"These are -"

"You can't -"

"Get her _out_ of that car!"

Hands were tugging at her injured arm, and the Slayer hissed like an outraged alley cat.

"Faith," said Dean in a low voice, almost a whisper. He needn't have been so quiet. No one could hear them over the FBI and police yelling.

Much louder, the Slayer called out, "See you soon, lover," and ever dramatic, she kissed him solidly, leaving traces of lipstick smeared across his mouth, before finally relenting and, snarling, allowed the men to pull her away.

Faith sat in the back of her own police car, her cuffed hands resting on her lap. Her upper arm was burning from the earlier bullet graze, and she could hear her pulse thudding rhythmically in her ears. She stared ahead at the driver's rearview mirror, where the brunette woman who had tried to take her down earlier was sitting, her un-manicured hands gripping the steering wheel. In shotgun was a shorter, older FBI agent, his dark hair and beard grizzled with gray.

The Slayer watched them, rarely blinking, feeling each and every one of her bruises and scrapes, filling the crevices of her brain with white noise. She had done everything she could to get things in motion, and now it was time to wait.

Three cars ahead of her, Dean Winchester was engaged in similar relaxation. His mind was somewhere, anywhere, a thousand miles from here. He was thinking about his brother and Bobby and the Leviathan problem. He was, in fact, doing the closest thing to meditation that existed in his mental toolbox, although he would have been the first to scoff at anyone who suggested it.

Despite his drifting thoughts, Dean also looked closely in the mirror at intervals, keeping his eyes locked on those of the tall FBI agent who had cuffed him. The first time their eyes met, the hunter smiled coldly. He and the Slayer had danced around this conversational block a thousand times.

If the FBI agents would only believe what they wanted to – as had Henriksen so long ago, until Lilith made disbelief impossible – then Dean was under no obligation to try and explain himself or to convince them of his innocence. The St. Louis PD had not been able to handle the whole shapeshifter thing, and there had only been one of them. There was no way in Hell that the Feds would be able to wrap their minds around an infiltration of Leviathans.

He stared ahead at the FBI agent, channeling all his concern for Sam and unsurety about their plan into cool arrogance and indifference. If a monster was what they wanted, a monster was what they would get.

It wasn't so hard, really. Monstrosity lurked beneath the surface of everyone. The monster in Dean Winchester just so happened to live far closer to the skin than it did in most other people.

* * *

**Polk County Jail, 8:30 p.m.**

Reid hovered over JJ's shoulder as a new message hit her phone, making the screen glow bright. "Where are they?" he asked, quickly and curiously. "Do you have an update?"

Accustomed to this, JJ read her message and then answered calmly, "Hotch texted, said they were on their way."

"_And_?" The young multi-doctorate was not one for suspense.

"They got 'em."

"Good. That's . . . That's good." He rocked back onto his heels, providing the blonde with a bit more breathing space. "What do you think? How far out are they?"

JJ pursed her lips in thought. "Fifteen minutes, maybe? 'Til they hit the parking lot. But then they'll have to bring them through processing before they come up to interrogation."

"Cool." Reid grimaced immediately afterwards. He corrected, "I mean – sorry. It's just that Henriksen had literally dozens of theories, but he could never quite close in on one." The agent glanced over to the cork board on the wall, where pictures of the Winchesters brothers and Faith Lehane were attached with green and blue push pins. "I'm curious what we're going to see."

"Me, too, Spence," said JJ, although mostly all that she wanted was to wrap this case up and head home to her family. "Me, too."

* * *

**8:45 p.m.**

"Out," Morgan called, opening the back door and watching as Winchester scooted his way across the upholstery and out of the police sedan.

Winchester said nothing, but he glanced surreptitiously from side to side, looking for Lehane and being nowhere near as sneaky as he thought he was. When he laid eyes on her, there was a slight, almost imperceptible release of tension. Had Morgan not been an expert who had spent years watching criminals' body language, he might have missed it. As it was, he was paying very close attention and saw how three cars back, a manacled Lehane appeared to relax at the same moment as Winchester – the literal _second_ when they made eye contact.

Lehane walked quickly, dragging her armed escort forward while Winchester simultaneously dragged his feet. There was no clear outpouring of concern, no wide-eyed yearning, only a silent, odd form of interpersonal magnetism, thought Morgan - and, on reflection, it was much like how he had imagined that Winchester would be with his brother. Morgan supposed he could understand the impulse. He felt similarly for his teammates. Out of habit, he looked to the side, taking his eyes off of Winchester long enough to look at Hotch, Prentiss, and Rossi, to make sure that they were all still there, unharmed.

When he turned back, Morgan could feel the unsub's dead-eyed green stare on him, cold, calculating, and cocky. He had a burning in his gut to knock that smug look off of Winchester's face, but he also knew that that losing his temper would be exactly what a monster like Winchester wanted.

"He's bleeding." That was Rossi, pointing out a darkened stain on the arm of Winchester's black military-style jacket.

"That ain't mine," said Dean Winchester, speaking for the first time since they had cuffed him in a voice of crunching gravel. "It's hers," the prisoner went on coolly, jerking his head in the direction of Lehane.

The woman's black leather jacket hid gore much better than his navy one did, but on closer inspection a small hole and a patch of still-bleeding skin were revealed.

"Oh." Rossi looked surprised, almost concerned.

"We'll deal with it inside," said SSA Hotchner firmly, and the group proceeded through another series of barbed wire fences to a heavy eight inch thick steel door. They were bustled down a gloomy, low-ceilinged hallway into a room with too-bright artificial electricity. Lehane and Winchester continued to drag their heels as the FBI agents and jail staff attempted to separate them by a few more feet.

Under the wary eyes and warier guns of the Feds, the criminals waited while they were thoroughly patted down. Off came the woman's knives and revolver. Winchester was divested of guns and ninja throwing stars, and a smoke grenade in the outside pocket of his jacket. Much to the BAU team members' surprise, they found a sizable canister of bear spray in the ripped inner lining of Lehane's leather jacket.

"Bear spray?" said Prentiss – the dark-haired woman – more than a little nonplussed.

Lehane only smirked.

Once their weapons were gone, the prisoners were uncuffed for a brief moment.

"All right, strip," ordered one of the jail officers, the one who appeared to be in charge of the contingent of jail-associated personnel in the crowded room.

Without protest, the man and woman began undressing. They removed their jackets in unison, and then Lehane pulled her tank top over her head while Winchester tugged off his button-down and undershirt in one ragged movement. They undid their belts and let them fall to the floor, kicking off boots and toeing out of socks before dropping trousers.

Despite the pain in her arm, Lehane refused to wince – likely out of stubbornness and pride, Morgan thought. She brought the injured arm in front of her chest and rested it across the other one, her face momentarily rigid before she glanced at Winchester and smirked again.

The corners of his mouth lifted in a small yet unmistakable grin, and as one, Lehane and Winchester slid their underwear halfway down in the back, effectively mooning the Feds.

"That's enough of that," said Morgan sharply, shoving a pair of orange scrubs into Winchester's arms while Prentiss did the same to Lehane and Hotch looked on. "Put these on."

"You'd think they'd never seen an ass before," quipped Lehane, taking the scrubs from Prentiss, that cocky smirk still lingering on her lips. She yanked her underwear back up.

"Probably haven't," agreed Winchester, his grin every bit as smarmy as hers.

But Prentiss had seen something, a flash of silver metal when Lehane moved. "Hang on," she said to the uniformed officer. "Pat her down again."

The officer went over Lehane's exposed body a second time, his gloved hands pressing firmly against arms and chest and bra and stomach and hips and – "Oh."

"There," said Prentiss.

The officer looked incredibly uncomfortable. "Ma'am, we need you to remove your underwear."

"You sure about that?" Lehane's tone was still light, her brown eyes amused, but there was danger and a warning there, the same threatening warning that Morgan had noted in the ice-green gaze of her partner earlier.

His gun pointing directly into her face, Morgan stepped forward. "We're sure. Go ahead. Remove it."

The uniformed officer reached forward, tugging and folding the band of Faith's underwear down just enough to reveal a stiletto thin blade with a collapsible handle taped to her skin, just to the middle of her left hip bone.

"The hell?" breathed one of the jail cops.

"Oops," said Faith as the officer removed the knife. She shrugged and smirked for the godsdammed thousandth time, the previous warmth in her eyes replaced with a cold sneer worthy of a superiority-complex-afflicted shark.

"Get dressed," barked Prentiss, but it was clear that everyone was nervous. There was blood in the air, and not just whatever vaporized bits were lingering over the wound on Lehane's upper arm. People who were supposed to be doing their jobs kept not doing their jobs, and it set every law officer on edge like nails on a chalkboard.

It did not help that Winchester and Lehane were so clearly bored with all of this. Occasionally they bent towards amused, but otherwise, as long as they were in eyeshot of each other, they seemed determined to be above it all. The closest Morgan had seen them get to angry, upset, or confused was when it had taken Winchester a moment to find Lehane in the crowd when they arrived at the prison. Elsewise, they seemed unperturbed, unruffled. They were acting as if they were the ones in charge, and frankly it pissed him off.

"Get moving," barked Morgan, echoing Prentiss's earlier instructions when Lehane put on the scrub pants and the "utility slippers" but did not finish dressing, unlike Winchester. "Put your shirt on."

Lehane raised an eyebrow. "Don't you want to have someone look at my arm first," she said in a low voice that in another situation might almost have been a purr. "You wouldn't want infection to set in now, would you?"

Morgan could hear Hotch grinding his teeth. He quite understood the impulse. Thankfully, after a brief moment of dental destruction, the senior agent took over.

"Put them in interrogation rooms – separate and plural. We'll have the warden send a doctor to look at your wound, Ms. Lehane. Now, put. Your. Shirt. On."

Mercifully, Lehane finally complied. "I want my call," she said, pulling the orange scrub top over her head.

Winchester said nothing.

"You'll have it," Hotch promised, behaving with what Morgan considered to be surprising courtesy.

The group finally set off out of the main processing area, and the prisoners were sent one by one through the metal detector. It went off screaming as soon as Lehane passed beneath it, and then they all had to go back for another pat down. This time, the culprit was a series of eight safety pins clipped along the underwire of the woman's brassiere. Lehane continued to smirk while the male law officers turned their backs and she was required to change into a jail-issued sports bra.

It took them a further ten minutes after that to get the prisoners into their separate interrogation rooms, chained to steel tables that were bolted to the floor. Morgan knew he could not be the only one who felt relief at having them separated again.

Every time they made eye contact, he could swear they were conspiring. Each glance seemed at once impossible to translate and at the same time to speak paragraphs. He could only hope that the other members of his team were doing better at interpreting than he was.

Once they had the prisoners safely confined in their respective interrogation rooms, the team reconvened in the temporary headquarters beside the warden's office.

The last one in, Emily closed the door and leaned against it. "Whewf," exhaled the brunette, puffing her cheeks out and furrowing her eyebrows. She crossed her eyes a little, as well, to add to the effect.

Agent Hotchner tapped his tongue against his front teeth and said only, "Well."

"That was . . ." Rossi trailed off, the usually eloquent man for once unable to complete his sentence.

"I know," nodded Morgan.

Reid could not restrain himself any longer. "What happened?" he interjected.

Rossi gave Spencer and JJ a brief rundown on how capturing Winchester and Lehane had gone, with occasional comments from Derek and Emily. Hotchner stayed out of this one and instead listened to his team's first impressions, mentally collating them with his own.

After a few minutes, JJ concluded, "From everything you guys have said, it sounds like we have a couple of psychopaths downstairs." She shook her blonde head and smiled a thin-lipped smile. "Well, that fits in with the profile."

Cocking his head to the side, Spencer inquired, "So which one is the dominant?"

That set Rossi, Prentiss, and Morgan off, talking all over one another as they attempted to debate it out.

"I can't-"

"I thought he was. But she -"

"I mean, did you see the way he looked at her?"

"Or how _she_ looked at _him_?"

"Or was he letting her act that way to try and pull one over on us?"

"Definitely might fit his sense of humor."

"But are either of them that clever?"

"I don't know."

"Me either."

"Boss," said Rossi, running a hand over his neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, "something feels off about this."

There had been a steady discomfort in the pit of Hotch's stomach, growing stronger over the last few hours, but he had attributed this to sleep deprivation, bad jail cafeteria food, and a general distaste for his prisoners. The older agent's words gave him reason to pause. "Meaning?"

"Meaning," mused Emily, pushing herself away from the door and walking closer to the others, "that tonight went a little too easy?"

Dave nodded. "Something along those lines. We sent a message with our press conference . . . maybe this was their way of accepting our invitation?"

"There were no casualties," Morgan noted with the beginnings of a frown. "Local LEOs are still processing the scene, but so far they've picked up dozens of casings. No report of anyone other than Lehane being injured, except for a couple of shoppers with sprained ankles."

Everyone digested this piece of information in silence for a long moment, and then Spencer spoke up, "Going off of Rossi's hypothesis, why would they want to be caught?"

"Simple," replied Hotchner, his stomachache a steady, obnoxious presence now. "We have Sam."

"And now we have all three of them." JJ's eyes met Emily's, and they shared a look of mutual concern. "Do you think they have some kind of escape plan?"

"Always," said Hotchner. "We'll just have to out-plan them."

Looks were exchanged around the room. The Winchesters had been very successful at eluding and escaping law enforcement custody in the past, as had Faith Lehane. Then again, they had never been in the custody of the BAU before.

The moment passed, and Morgan cleared his throat. "What's the plan, Hotch?"

"We don't need confessions, technically," the special supervisory agent thought aloud. "The video from Missouri will be enough to secure life sentences, possibly the death penalty. But . . ."

"Confessions would be nice," Emily finished for him.

"Very. For now, let's get whatever medical staff is currently on duty – doctor or nurse – to patch up that scrape on Lehane. Otherwise, we can let them sit. It's barely past nine. A few hours of quiet will do them good."

"And then?"

"Morgan, you take first crack at Winchester. I'll take Lehane. JJ?"

"Yes?"

"It's your turn next to continue surveillance on Sam Winchester."

"Yessir."

"All right. Emily, Dave, with me. I want to review everything you've got on Lehane again. One last time."

* * *

Over the next two hours, while the BAU studied and stressed and gulped down lukewarm gas station coffee, their new prisoners did nothing interesting. Winchester took a nap, his long bowlegs stretched out beneath the interrogation table, his head tilted backwards over the top of the chair back. Lehane slept with her head on the table, pillowed in her arms, one of which now had a thick white gauze bandage wrapped around it several times. She did not look up when the door creaked open and Hotch entered. She did not even move until he spoke to her.

"You've made some very bad choices, Ms. Lehane," he announced, dropping a folder onto the metal table with a loud thump and taking the chair opposite hers.

The woman lifted her bedraggled head from off of the tabletop. Her eyeliner was heavily smudged, and she had left an accidental red lipstick print on the back of her palm, but when she spoke, her voice was filled with a disturbing mixture of self-satisfaction and venom. "I'll take lame BDSM pick-up lines for two hundred, Alex," she purred. Shaking her dark brown hair out of her face, she added flatly, "Oh, and I want my damn phone call."

Surliness was a definite improvement over her previous menace flirting. Hotchner started, "You -"

"Phone call," Lehane repeated, cutting him off abruptly. "Or lawyer. Right now. One or the other. It's your choice, big guy."

Hotchner withdrew his FBI-issued cellphone and handed it across the table to her. Lehane managed to take the piece of electronics in her manacled hands and open the flip phone with a muttered, "old school."

She punched in ten digits with her thumbs and clicked the speaker button in a show of good faith. The call rang four times and then a cool female voice with a vague Texas accent answered, "Offices of Wolfram and Hart, How may I help you?"

"Hi, Winifred," said Lehane smoothly. "This is Faith Lehane. I'm in need of lawyers. Wanna send some over? I'm in the Polk County Jail, out in Des Moines, Iowa."

"Mr. Bludson and Mr. d'Angelo will be there shortly, ma'am."

"Thank you."

Lehane hung up the phone with a snap. "Lawyers are coming," she stared the FBI agent down balefully, "and I ain't talking to you."

Then she lowered her head back to her arms and appeared to fall asleep again within seconds.

Hotch stepped out, took two steps down the hall, and walked into the observation room where Prentiss and Rossi were waiting for him, having overhead and overseen the entirety of the brief interview. "Well?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

"She's cold," frowned Emily, who certainly had not expected that. "I wouldn't have thought it."

"Neither would I," agreed Rossi. "When you study the old interrogation transcripts back in California, cool and controlled was not her style."

"Right," Aaron said. His stomach twinged uncomfortably. "And now we wait for her lawyers to arrive. If they're not here by morning, I'll go back in and try again. We can go with plan B in the meantime. Come on, let's go see if Morgan's had any luck at getting Dean Winchester to run hot."

* * *

**11:07 p.m.**

Winchester was awake the second the door opened. Derek could tell just from the increased lines of tension in his body. But the conceited bastard – mass-murderer – torturer – rapist – waited until the FBI agent slammed the door shut before opening one eye in a malevolent squint and then closing it again.

"Hi, Dean," said Morgan, taking a seat on the cold metal chair. He copied the unsub's posture, stretching his legs, rocking the chair back until it was halfway off the ground, resting the back of his skull on interlocking fingers. "You've been quite the busy bee."

The other eye opened this time, pale green beneath the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. "I want to talk to my brother," stated Winchester in a deep, harsh voice that clearly gargled gravel for breakfast and liked it.

"Sorry. I'm afraid that's not possible." Morgan replied. His tone made it plain that he was neither a) afraid nor b) sorry.

Winchester closed his eyes again. He shrugged his shoulders and wriggled a little down into his chair to find the perfect comfortable posture. "He all right?"

"Depends on what you mean by alright," answered Morgan smoothly. "Sam is in quite a bit of trouble. So are you. So is Ms. Lehane."

Winchester gave an obvious yawn, his mouth stretching so far open that Morgan could see his uvula. Apparently, he was going to play this I-don't-give-a-damn game until the end of the line.

_Well,_ thought the FBI agent with grim satisfaction. That particular damn line was about to reach its damn end.

"We talked to the DA," he lied, cool as a cucumber. "They might be willing to offer a deal."

"Mmm," grunted the man. It was barely a sign of interest, but Morgan would take what he could get.

"Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do for _you._ But, with your confession, the assistant US attorney might be willing to let your little brother off the hook."

He waited for a moment to let this sink in and then followed up with, "Whaddya say, Dean? Ever since you showed up in Palo Alto, you've been a millstone around your brother's neck. You gonna drag him down with you this time, too? Or are you going to take this offer? Who knows? It could be your last chance to save Sammy."

* * *

**11:21 p.m.**

JJ and Emily hovered in the observation room that had been set up, peering intently at the large television screen in front of them where security cameras were routing the feeds from two hallways and two specific cells. According to plan, they had moved Lehane into a cell adjacent to Sam Winchester. The walls of the cell were two inches thick of reinforced steel to prevent the inmates from seeing or passing notes to one another, but they had made sure the prison guards had taken Lehane past Winchester's barred door en route to her own. The slight jerk of her head as she walked by had been enough to confirm that she had noticed him.

_Good,_ thought Emily.

Once alone, the prisoner did not waste much time. Less than two minutes passed before she stepped close to the wall of her cell and hissed, "Hey. Are you – can you – Sam, can you hear me?"

Winchester scooted as far back on his bunk as he could, staring at the wall opposite with a look of horror. "Go away," said Sam in a terrified voice.

JJ raised her eyebrows. 'You think he recognizes her?"

"Maybe," said Prentiss. "Or he's just crazy. Shh. They're still talking."

"Samuel," Lehane was calling, somehow making her voice sound soothing and irritated all at the same time. "Samuel frigging Winchester. It's me." When he did not reply, she dropped down into a crouch, pressing her cheek against the cold metal. "Sam," she repeated, more gruffly this time. It was not a half-bad impression of Dean Winchester.

"No," babbled Sam Winchester. "No. No no no no no."

"Hey." She snapped her fingers, the sound surprisingly loud. Apparently, Sam heard that, for his head lifted upwards. "Wake up, Rapunzel."

The man's eyes widened, and he said his first clearly lucid thing in hours. "Wrong fairy tale."

Lehane gave a short huff of exasperation. "No sh-t, Sherlock."

For a brief moment, neither spoke and then, _"Hey,"_ the woman murmured again, and her unseen listeners were shocked by the gentleness of her voice.

"Sam," she went on, determined, "it's me. It's Faith. And you need to calm down."

"He was here," said Sam Winchester fervently, squinting as though if he looked hard enough, his gaze could pierce through the steel wall and find her.

"Was he?" commented Lehane in tones of dry unsurprise.

Winchester continued, "He looked like Dean. For a while. And then he looked like you."

"Was he hot?" wondered the woman. "As Dean, I mean? We all know he was hot if he was me."

Sam snorted in a moment of laughter. Then he asked, "Is Dean . . .?"

"Dean's okay," Lehane reassured him. "I'm okay. You're okay. We're all okay."

"The FBI -"

With a quick glance up at the ceiling, Lehane shook her head and cut him off with, "It's okay."

"The Leviathans -"

Lehane interrupted him for a second time. "Like I said, it's gonna be okay."

Leaning his head back against the wall of his cell, Sam Winchester let out a short, barking, humorless laugh. "How?"

"You gotta trust me -" Lehane paused, as if considering the likelihood of her statement, and hurriedly added, "or trust Dean, anyway."

"But-"

"Easy, Paul Bunyan," she soothed, almost a mother rocking her child to sleep. Her words fell soft and slow and rhythmic as she murmured them through the wall. "It's gonna be okay. You hear me, Sammy boy? I promise you, it's gonna be okay."

Up in the observation room, the FBI agents regarded one another in consternation as the staticky audio feed died away into silence. Whatever they had expected, it had certainly not been that.

Jennifer Jareau frowned at the television screen, where Winchester was slowly clambering off of his bed to take up a position by the other wall, a mirror image to Lehane. "I didn't think they'd get along."

Emily was worrying about something else. "What did he mean, Leviathans?"

"I don't know. But it looks almost like . . . almost like . . ."

"Like what?"

"Like whatever divisions exist amongst themselves, they'll pull together against an outside force. In this case, us."

"Yeah. I saw that, too. Hang on -"

Winchester was talking again, his voice barely loud enough to be picked up by the microphones hidden in the cells. "Faith?"

"I'm here."

"I'm – I'm glad it is you. You're . . ." he paused, ". . . better than the Devil."

Lehane snorted. "Thanks. You know, Sam, that might just be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

* * *

**11:25 p.m.**

That last question had done it, Morgan was sure. Finally, Winchester opened both eyes and straightened up in his seat. The chair legs clanged as they hit the floor. If looks could kill, Derek reasoned, he would probably be dead right about now.

"Well?" he prompted.

"I ain't makin' no deal with anyone but the prosecutor," said Dean Winchester sourly. "And I ain't doing any more talking until I see my brother."

* * *

**12:11 a.m. **

She was beginning to feel it, now. The hour of her death approaching. Either this plan would work, or it wouldn't. And if it didn't – well, there wasn't much use in worrying about it anymore. The woman took a deep breath in and coughed. Screw it. Her entire chest ached.

"Faith?" That was Sam again. Neither of them had been able to sleep, and every time they talked, he continued to sound worried. "Faith?"

The Slayer did not bother to flatter herself. If Sam hadn't been having Satan-vision and locked up in federal custody, like as not he would be cursing her out, taking off, or trying to pick a fist fight – which he would definitely, certainly, absolutely, positively, nine hundred and forty percent lose. This was not about concern for her. This was Sam terrified of being alone again with his hallucinations of the Devil.

"Sorry, Sam," wheezed Faith, looking down at the frothy purple goop that she had just coughed into her palm. "Think I mighta made a mistake." She inhaled again and was overcome by another round of coughing. This time, the gunk staining the elbow of her orange jumpsuit was purple mixed with dark scarlet._ Here we go,_ she thought, as her throat began to swell closed. _Time's up._

"What mistake?"

When there was no response, Sam repeated his question. "What?"

His only reply was silence. Trepidation growing, he tried one more time. "_Faith_?!"

Nothing.

_Oh, no,_ thought the hunter desperately, as a shadowy figure materialized beside him. It was Lucifer, wearing the guise of his former vessel Nick, already leering and pointing a laughing finger at Sam. This couldn't mean anything good.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay in getting this up! Thanks to everyone who's been reading so far! :)

* * *

**September 15th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 11:55 p.m.**

It was a trap. It had to be a trap. There was no – _zero - zilch - zip - nada- never in a million years - _no way that this could be real. And yet it was.

Lehane was slumped backwards against the steel wall where her cell met Winchester's. She appeared to have fallen sideways from a kneeling position. Her neck was tilted to the left in an awkward, unnatural angle. Her mouth gaped open, flecks of purple and white foam still oozing from the corners of her eyes, nostrils, and lips. Her brown eyes were open, blank and unblinking.

"JJ, call Hotch!" yelled Prentiss, pushing her chair back in a panic. "Right now!"

Without waiting to hear the reply, the brunette FBI agent took off sprinting down hallways full of dark, silent offices, through a metal detector checkpoint that buzzed angrily as she charged through it, and past more hallways of jeering prisoners until she reached the cell in question. Yelling for the guard following her to hurry up, she danced from foot to foot while the man fumbled with the keys. As soon as the heavy door was open, she ran forward. Emily pressed her index and middle fingers to the Lehane's neck, but there was no pulse.

Prentiss bent her head forward momentarily. This was a complication they desperately did not need. "_Sh-t_," she hissed.

They were nowhere near close to getting a confession out of any of the three spree killers. And now, getting a confession from Lehane had just passed beyond the realm of possibility forever.

* * *

**September 16th, 2012, 12:19 a.m.**

"Should we tell him?" wondered Reid twenty minutes later, after the rest of the team had been advised of Lehane's death and gathered in the observation room near their sole remaining quasi-sane prisoner.

Not yet entirely cool, Lehane's body had already been removed from her cell to the windowless room in the basement which counted as the jail morgue. The young FBI agent gestured to the screen facing the team, where cameras showed Dean Winchester still sitting in his interrogation room. His hair was perhaps a bit more ruffled than it had been when they had arrested him, but otherwise the mass-murderer remained the same. Same arrogant green-eyed gaze, same cocky stare whenever he looked up at the camera.

"You crazy, pretty boy?" said Morgan, his eyebrows shooting straight up his forehead to where his hairline had been once upon a time.

"Bad idea," murmured Rossi, who had yet to stop pursing his lips since JJ and Prentiss had brought everyone word of Lehane's demise. They were operating under the theory that it had been poison, likely self-administered, but _why_? Until he had a good answer to that question, Rossi would not be satisfied.

"No," said Hotchner thoughtfully. "Not just yet."

Emily nodded in agreement. "He's liable to go ballistic."

"Yes." The lead agent frowned. "What did the files say? Is there any information that might better guide our expectations of his behavior in this situation?"

"Not specifically, that I recall," Reid shook his head. "I mean, up until that most recent tape, there was no real proof of their association. Only scattered bits of speculation dating back to an incident in Princeton, New Jersey, in August of 2006. Three people matching the general description of the Winchesters were involved in the death of a researcher and a subsequent explosion in her laboratory."

"Not sure that specifics matter too much," Morgan commented, folding his arms over his chest. "The profile gives us enough to predict the basics. Winchester does not respond well to loss. Henriksen speculated that it was the death of Mary Winchester, the mother, that drove Winchester senior to take his sons on the road and into a unstable life of violence and criminal behavior. And the timeline checks out that the death of Jessica Moore drove Sam Winchester back onto that very road with his brother. We don't have the details on how tangled up Winchester and Lehane were, but given that she stuck around after they escaped Ankeny instead of getting the hell out of Dodge, I'd say it's pretty likely that they were tangled up enough for Dean Winchester to get pretty damn pissed when he finds out she died in our custody."

"Scientifically speaking, how pissed is pretty damn pissed?" mused Reid, his inner inquisitive pedant shining through.

"Pissed enough to make a mistake?" proposed Rossi hopefully

"Or to shut down?" suggested JJ.

"Well," Prentiss exhaled heavily, playing the role of Captain Obvious for the evening, "this is gonna be bad."

Morgan snorted in agreement. "Got that right. It's gonna be real bad."

* * *

**September 16th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 1:00 a.m.**

The dark SUV rolled up to the main gate of the prison, and its driver's side window rolled down to reveal a pale hand sticking through the sleeve of a black suit coat. The buzzer was pressed. Moments later, a voice responded, "State your name."

"Liam D'Angelo and Will Bludson, attorneys with the firm of Wolfram and Hart. We're here to see our clients."

"Names?" asked the voice sharply.

"Lehane, Faith. Winchester, Dean and Samuel."

There was a pause while the owner of the voice consulted something or another. Then came a sharp crackle of static, and the voice said, "Park on the left, and proceed to the main entrance."

The window rolled up, and the SUV pulled forward. Inside, the occupant in the front passenger seat said peevishly. "Why the hell'd you go with _Will_? No one has _ever_ called me that."

When the driver replied, it was in tones of great, habitual irritation. "_Because_," an entire tooth fairy's career worth of teeth ground together in that single word, "saying 'Liam' and 'William' wouldn't make a lot of sense, now, would it?"

"So how come you got to be Liam and I had to be Will?" The passenger's words increased in speed and pitch. "Why didn't you pick the fake name? You always -"

"Spike," growled Angel, his irritation bleeding into anger. His pale hands were very carefully not clenched around the steering wheel. "Focus."

"Right," said the blond vampire, pulling his seatbelt as far away from his chest as it would go and releasing it with a _snap_. "Focus. I can do that. You wanna run through the plan again?"

Angel exhaled. It had been a taxing day for the nerves. Days with Spike often were. "Not particularly. But I have a feeling that you do."

"Might as well," said Spike with relentless cheerfulness. "Step one, find Faith and her little boyfriends."

"I am fairly sure she's only seeing one of them." Why couldn't Gunn have been available? Why had Buffy insisted that she was too busy cleaning out the last remnants of a nasty Fook Beast infestation on the outskirts of Palo Alto? Why couldn't he have been trapped in this car with an actual demonic lawyer? Why couldn't it have been anyone – _anyone_ – but Spike?

Incorrigible and irrepressible, Spike carried on as if he had not heard. "Step two, burn the place down and eat all the other people."

If Angel had not already been stressed to the point of contemplating vampiricide, he might have suspected Spike of being purposefully ridiculous to break the tension. There was a bit more on the line than either of them felt comfortable with. "Wrong plan."

"Oh." The blond's face fell theatrically. "Not eating the people, then?"

"No." The older vampire carefully steered the SUV into a too-small parking spot. Spike would have a devil of a time exiting his side of the vehicle. _Serves him right_, thought Angel, who was almost never above the opportunity for petty revenge. Just exactly what he was getting revenge for was irrelevant at this point.

"Not even _one_ of them?"

"No. Are you having a soul malfunction?"

Spike sighed. "Nah, more's the pity. Stuck with this bloody conscience and all this bloody guilt, and I was thinking on the plane ride over that it's a waste of time, right? Waste of time to feel bad over all those Happy Meals just trying to shish-kabob each other."

"Mmm," said Angel noncommittally. There wasn't exactly time for Spike's one-vampire pity-party at the moment - although sometimes said pity-party tended to turn into a runaway train that he didn't have the energy to stop.

The younger vampire sighed again. "I mean, really! And then I got to thinking . . . why does this plan have to be so goddamned dramatic?"

Angel raised an eyebrow. "Because it's a Slayer plan," he explained with more patience than he felt.

"Be a lot simpler if she'd just thrown in a handful of hell hounds or werewolves or something, and then gone in for the Winchester Super-Sized. Maybe some dog soldier demons – I know a guy who could've gotten her a dozen of those real cheap and quick-like."

"I really think we need to check if there was a warranty on your soul," said Angel dryly.

"Why?"

"Because I'm pretty sure the one you've got in there has expired." The brunette vampire unbuckled his seat belt and opened his car door. "Come on, Mr. Bludson. We've got lawyer-talking to do."

"Fun," said Spike, his tone laden with sarcasm. He followed the other vampire out of the SUV, nearly dinging the police car opposite and having to suck his stomach all the way into his spine in order to squeeze past the tiny space between door and door frame.

"Just saying," he muttered under his breath as they walked up to the barbed wire fencing and eight foot tall gate that led into the prison. "Dog soldier demons would've had this place settled in five minutes. Ten if they got stomach cramps."

"_Spike_," hissed Angel out of the corner of his mouth.

The vampire sighed one last time. "Yes, sweetheart." His smile could have curdled new milk. "I'll behave."

* * *

Fifteen minutes of poking and prodding later, they were sitting in a cold, impersonal room with four concrete walls and a video camera clearly visible in the corner opposite the door where roof met ceiling. Spike had managed to keep his thoughts to himself, even when they'd been forced to leave all their belongings in lockers and walk through metal detectors to make sure they were unarmed. A foolish precaution, the vampire thought sardonically. The great ponce and he didn't need weapons. They had teeth. Which was quite enough to be going on with.

They waited another ten minutes more before a tall man with dark hair and a strong, sharp face entered the room. Spike suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as Angel stood and offered his hand for the man to shake. Always officious, that Captain Forehead. Once introductions were out of the way, they all sat down together and waited for the FBI agent to speak.

For his part, Aaron Hotchner was more than willing to play the quiet game. He had one dead spree killer (whose death might or might not have been a part of the plan that she and Dean Winchester had walked in with), and the two that remained alive also remained stubbornly uncommunicative. Now here came the lawyers in their expensive suits and questionable accents. Their business cards and online credentials had checked out, but they looked more like street toughs than junior partners at a prestigious law firm. He watched them silently, curious who would break first.

After the third hand on the wall clock had toiled laboriously in a full circle, the lawyers capitulated.

"Our client," said the taller man, the one with the dark hair and the heavier build. "We need to see her."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," replied Hotch smoothly. No need to tell them why just yet, he justified to himself. Best to avoid it for as long as possible.

"Oh?" the brunette man said in tones of great skepticism.

"How come not?" interjected the shorter, blond one. A faded scar sliced through one of his eyebrows. Combined with his strong Cockney accent and his exceedingly well-tailored suit, it made rather an odd picture. "We're her lawyers," he continued belligerently.

"Unfortunately . . ." There was no way around it. Hotchner carefully arranged his features into even more professional solemnity. "I am very sorry to tell you this. Ms. Lehane is dead."

The men's faces grew paler, a thing that Hotchner had not imagined possible. Their complexions, already similar to that of skim milk, diluted themselves by at least half.

"I'm sorry – _what_?" demanded one.

"How?" barked the other.

"Unfortunately, we do not, uh, have all the answers at this point. We are still determining -"

"Where is she?" interrupted the blond.

More smoothly, Mr. D'Angelo spoke over him, "What my colleague means to say is that we would like to see our client."

"But she's -"

The lawyer grit his teeth, making a noise akin to that of a bulldozer struggling against an elephant-sized boulder. "Dead, yes. You said. Dead or alive, she's still our client." At Hotch's incredulous look, he added, "You'll find that Wolfram and Hart does not discriminate along such feeble lines as vital status."

"What?" said Hotchner, having difficulty believing that he was hearing correctly.

"Yup," agreed the blond lawyer, shock and anger briefly replaced by smarmy. "It's on our business cards."

Somehow, Aaron must have missed that particular patch of fine print.

D'Angelo continued in those same smooth, deep tones, "We also need to see Mr. Winchester and Mr. Winchester."

"What?" Aaron did not like being surprised. On second thought, however, he ought to have seen this coming. _Of course _whatever crooked lawyers Lehane had consulted would also be working to get her co-conspirators off the hook as well. He took a deep breath to remind himself that not all defense attorneys were the devil.

"After all, we do represent them as well. Did our secretary not mention?" The dark-haired one frowned.

"No," said Hotchner. "No one mentioned that."

"Well," said the blond sharply, "we are. You just go tell Dean Winchester that Bludson and D'Angelo from Wolfram and Hart are here. You'll see right soon enough."

"I'm not an errand boy," replied the FBI agent.

"That's all right." The blond leaned back in his chair, the picture of insouciant comfort. "We can wait a bit. But no more than half an hour, mind, or we'll start calling judges and filing lawsuits. Terrible things, lawsuits."

"Oh, and one more thing," added the other lawyer. "We will see our client _here_."

"What?" Hotch really needed to think up a better response than just echoing "what" like a duck with a speech impediment.

"We will see him here," repeated the one called D'Angelo. "You can cover him in chains like Christmas wrapping paper, if you like. But it is imperative that we see him here."

Hotchner quit the room before he had to deal with them any further. He stepped along the hallway and into the observation room, where Prentiss and Rossi were waiting for him. They had added additional cameras to their security feeds prior to showing the lawyers in, courtesy of Garcia.

"Those guys are not right," observed Prentiss, glaring at the two lawyers on the computer screen. "There's something off about them."

Personally, the lead FBI agent agreed strongly with that sentiment, but sentiment alone would not help them at the moment. "Do we have any justifiable reason to deny them access to the Winchesters or to Lehane's body?" he asked the room at large.

Rossi frowned and shook his head. "No. Not legally. Prentiss is right, though, Aaron. I've got an uncomfortable feeling about this."

"I know." Hotchner exhaled heavily. "Any word on the cause of death for Lehane?"

"Nothing solid," answered Prentiss. "The ME refuses to do more than speculate until she's transported to the city morgue and he can do the post-mortem. Over the phone, he agreed that poisoning was a strong possibility. Still, it could also be cardiac arrest or overdose or . . . God, a dozen other things. Still, you both know as well as I do that a death in police custody never looks good."

The three looked at one another in miserable silence, attempting to think of a half-logical excuse that they could use to explain away their delay tactics. As they were thinking, someone knocked loudly at the door. Rossi opened it, and a very troubled Morgan stormed in.

"Sir, we've got a problem." His voice thrummed with tension.

"Another one?" said Hotchner dourly, his dark eyebrows furrowing.

"Yes. It's Dean Winchester."

Aaron turned away from the television screen, his stomach aching with foreboding. "What happened?"

"You didn't tell him about Lehane, did you?" asked Emily, doing her best not to criticize. "I thought we all agreed to wait for that."

"No." Morgan shook his head. "That's not it. Hotch . . . you aren't going to like this, but Dean Winchester's dead, too."

"_WHAT?"_

* * *

Spike and Angel sat next to each other, doing their best to not appear like they were communicating under the table or dying of boredom. A few minutes after the FBI agent left, Spike coughed, stretched his legs, and looked towards Angel. Signal received, the older vampire turned his head and returned the look.

Spike's eyebrows darted minutely upward, instigating a silent conversation. _Well?_

Angel looked steadily into the other vampire's eyes. _So far, so good._

The corner of the blond's mouth dipped down in the ghost of a grimace. _Dead?_

Angel blinked at him in a repeat of his earlier message. _Like I said, so far, so good._

Spike brushed the back of his left wrist with a single finger and glanced up at the camera on the wall. Then, after another whole body shrug and wriggle, he made eye contact with Angel again._ How long, do you think?_

The other vampire took a slightly deeper-than-usual breath and exhaled a phantom sigh. _We wait._

Spike rolled his eyes. He hated the waiting part of a plan. It was different on a stake-out. You could chat or whinge or sleep while your partner tried to chat or whinge at you or listen to the Pistols' entire discography. You weren't just stuck sitting in silence.

They waited for another ten, twenty, thirty minutes before the FBI agent returned to the room, his face shuttered closed.

"There's been an accident," he said uncomfortably.

Spike leaned forwards in his chair, sensing blood in the air. "Go on," he encouraged, his tone dangerous.

"Dean Winchester has also died."

The small room erupted into pandemonium. Spike and Angel shot to their feet at once and instantly started talking, taking to their respective roles of loudly threatening lawyer and quietly menacing lawyer with ease.

"You _WHAT_? _How?"_

"Agent Hotchner, this is simply unacceptable. You must allow us to see our clients now."

"What the hell kind of sh-t show are you running around here?"

"Mr Blud-"

"I'm going to call every judge and journalist in this bloody county and then you'll -"

"My colleague is perhaps overly impassioned in manner but correct in principle. Allow us to see our clients immediately, or -"

"Or what?" Hotchner allowed his temper to get the better of him, and he interrupted the lawyer sharply.

D'Angelo smiled, cold and chilling. For a half second, the FBI agent was reminded of the recently late Dean Winchester.

"I would hate for this to become unpleasant. Wouldn't you, Agent Hotchner?" said D'Angelo in a purr that set the hair on the back of Hotchner's neck standing on end.

"I'll see what I can do."

The vampires waited another forty-five minutes, with staggered angry pacing around the room every ten minutes or so. It was now nearly three am, if Angel's internal clock was anything to go by. Faith should have been dead for about three and a half hours now, Dean almost two. Dawn would arrive by six-thirty. They were not running out of time, not just yet, but it would be a near thing.

Eventually, two FBI agents arrived to take them to their deceased clients. They followed the stern Feds, a tall black man and a no-nonsense brunette woman, along a dark hallway, down a narrow stairwell, and into the basement, where they entered a poorly lit room, the plaque on the door's inset glass window bearing a single word: Morgue.

In the center of the cavernous space, two plastic body bags were stretched out over steel gurneys. The FBI agents stepped over to the head of the bags and unzipped them, revealing two pale faces.

Somewhat miraculously, in Spike's opinion, Angel's expression remained impassive. It was hard to see Faith there, her eyes and lips heavily made up and smudged, foam lingering at the corners of her mouth, her open eyes bloodshot. Hard enough for Spike, who had regarded this particular Slayer as an amusing antagonist at the worst of times and a good friend at the best. For Angel, who had seen himself in her and who was constantly engaged in a circle of redeeming and redemption with the brunette, it had to be far worse.

He glanced towards the other corpse. Winchester had not fared any better than Faith. If anything, he looked worse, the blood rimming his irises far darker, extending further into the white sclera.

Spike thought idly that it was something out of a horror movie – the dim morgue, the silent FBI agents, the bloodied corpses, the witching hour . . . and then, remembering that all four of them (the Slayer and the hunter, but the vampires most of all) truly _were _something out of a horror movie, he suppressed the urge to grin. Angel might have appreciated it. Tweedle Law and Tweedle Lady Law certainly would not have.

"Well," said the blond after a long moment of silence, "those are our clients."

"We'll be requiring an autopsy done by an independent authority," said Angel in a business-like manner, already stepping away and turning his back on the bodies. "I'll be making the call now."

"Mr. D'Angelo, you can't -" said the male agent while simultaneously the female one said, "Sir, that's not allowed."

"Oh, I think you'll find he can," Spike cut in smoothly. "He's very good at convincing people, is our Mr. D'Angelo. Now . . . why don't you people do your damn jobs and take us to our other client. It's time we saw Samuel Winchester."

* * *

After a fierce debate and yet another half hour, the vampires found themselves waiting outside an interrogation room until the agents who had taken Sam inside finally exited. Only then did Angel and Spike walk in. They did not need law enforcement personnel seeing their lack of reflection in the one-way mirror glass.

At last, the agents stepped out, nodded, and said, "You may go in."

Entering with roughly one hundred and thirty percent of their usual amount of swagger, the vampires took seats at the bare steel table. Their backs faced the mirror as they regarded the man in chains.

"Hello, Sam," said Angel pleasantly. They had met once, and he was hoping that the hunter remembered him. Although, to be fair, Angel did not really remember the specifics of the encounter at all; he had been in very much a bad way at the time. It had been less than a week after the horrid Twilight fiasco. "I'm Mr. D'Angelo, and this is my colleague, Mr. Bludson. We are attorneys with the firm Wolfram and Hart, and we are here to represent you."

The tall man looked at them warily and said quietly, "I don't remember -"

Spike's Cockney accent grated over the posh words, "Your brother obtained our services after a recommendation from Ms. Lehane."

Sam stared at the mirror, where he saw no reflections of the brunette or the blond. He looked back to the vampires, and his eyes became somewhat more focused. "Spi -" he started.

The vampire coughed loudly to cover the ending of his name.

"Faith," said Sam instead, switching tacks as best he could. Tears burned in the backs of his eyes. It had been an everlastingly long night, and he was not entirely sure which of his senses he could trust, but . . . "Faith – she – she's – it's -"

"She is dead, Mr. Winchester," said Spike, taking the lead. He stared straight at the man, piercing him with his pale gaze. "As is your brother."

"No." Sam Winchester jerked back in his seat. "No. He's not. Dean's not. You're – Lucifer said – he – you're lying."

"Sam," the blond called his name firmly and coolly. "Calm. Down."

Angel narrowed his eyes. "Mr. Winchester, prior to this most unfortunate turn of events, Dean and Faith had asked us to represent you."

Sam stared at them, his eyes flickering from the vampires to their not-reflections and back half a dozen times. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, "Okay," in a quiet voice that stank of defeat.

"Excellent." Spike smiled without meaning it. "Just a few preliminary questions to start off. Can you tell us your full name?"

"Samuel Winchester."

"Date of birth?" pressed Angel, and he took over the questioning.

"May second, nineteen eighty-three."

"Good. Sam, where are we right now?"

The man shook his head, sending unwashed hair flinging from one side of his face to the other. "I'm not sure. A prison, somewhere? Place's too big to be a jail. Midwestern United States, I think."

"Okay. Can you tell me what the date is?"

"September . . . something? twenty twelve."

"Okay. You're oriented, more or less. Sam, do you understand why you're here?"

Sam took another deep breath. He glanced away from Angel towards Spike, looking for confirmation and perhaps a bit of encouragement. Then, swallowing, he went on, "The Devil's following me."

"What do you mean by the Devil?" Angel queried.

"You know – Satan, Lucifer, the Son of the Morning? Fought with God, fell from Heaven, seeks the destruction of all mankind. That Devil." The hunter winced, as if saying the names too many times could summon the very thing he feared.

"And when you say that he's following you -"

Eyes widening to twice their normal size, the man gasped, "I mean that he's literally here, right now, behind you."

"What is he saying, Samuel?"

"He's saying . . ." Sam trailed off. His eyes widened yet again, the blood draining from his face, and then he tried to rise from his seat, but was held down by his manacles. Sam started screaming. "He's – Oh, God, he's – burning – there's fire – he's got – he's got Dean, he's oh God, oh God!"

* * *

Spike and Angel stepped out into the hallway, exchanging semi-satisfied glances and then approached the FBI agents who had been standing guard outside the door.

"Your treatment of our client," Angel began harshly, "is beyond ridiculous."

"Excuse me?" The dark agent attempted to stare him down. For a human, he had a very intimidating stare. Unluckily for him, Angel and Spike had not been human in centuries.

"The man doesn't need prison," declared Spike. "He needs a doctor!"

Continuing, Angel went on, "Sam Winchester is delusional at best and delirious at worst. Has he been checked out by a certified mental health professional or even a medical doctor yet?"

"Not just yet," admitted the female agent with a grimace, appearing uncomfortable.

"_NO_?" bellowed Spike.

Not bothering to wait for the humans' ears to cease ringing, Angel reproved them, "That will be changing. Now. I want Sam Winchester transferred out of this facility immediately. Two of our three clients are dead, and the third is in serious need of medical treatment. This place is not safe for my single remaining living client. You start moving him to a hospital – _now_ – or I will have every law enforcement watchdog group and every prisoners' rights advocate crawling so far up your ass that they come out your nose!"

That threat seemed sufficient to start something, for the FBI agents because to bustle and hustle around. Spike was momentarily relieved that they hadn't needed to call in one of their back-up judges, although he already had Gunn on stand-by with a pre-written article ready to leak it to the first yellow journalist that he found. Becka and Lily had also amassed a long email list of online bloggers who would do anything for clicks. Some of them were thirstier and more desperate for attention than Perez Hilton, which was saying quite a lot.

While the FBI got their underwear un-twisted, Spike and Angel were left to cool their heels in the same conference room where they had started out a few hours before. Spike did his best not to notice the time ticking by on the analog clock. It was verging on depressing.

After another stretch of infinity (that was really only an hour), Supervisory Special Agent Hotchner reappeared. He hovered in the doorway and announced, "All right. We have made arrangements. We will be taking Sam Winchester to a secure mental health facility. Once he has arrived there and has been secured, we will inform you as to his new location."

"Why can't you tell us now?" the blond vampire pestered him.

The FBI agent frowned. Again. It was a less than pleasant expression, thought Angel.

"Because we do not want to risk any incidents along the way. We have also arranged for the coroner's office to transport the bodies of Faith Lehane and Dean Winchester to the city morgue, where the medical examiner will perform his official exam. Should that be insufficient for you, you may also hire a private forensic pathologist to conduct an independent autopsy."

"Oh, we will," Spike assured him with a lift of his scarred eyebrow.

"Right. Well, I suppose we will see you in several hours." Hotchner looked unexcited at the prospect. "Now, if you could please leave while we finish our preparations…"

"We can take a hint," said Spike, who generally couldn't take anything more subtle than an anvil unless it suited him to do otherwise.

"Thank you for your help, Agent Hotchner," said Angel with a smile infused with fake warmth. He held out his hand for the FBI agent to shake. "We greatly appreciate your efforts in the service of justice."

Spines straight, shoulders back, heads tall, the vampires exited the building and returned to their SUV. This time, Spike slipped behind the wheel, while Angel took shotgun.

"So?" Spike glanced into the rear floorboard and reached over the back of the seat to fiddle with the lid of a cooler. He pulled out an insulated plastic cup filled with dark-red liquid, complete with lid and straw. The vampire handed the cup over to Angel and then withdrew a similar thermos for himself. Buckling his seatbelt, he took a long, slow slurp, inhaling the entirety of the blood over the course of a minute.

"Thanks," said Angel after finishing his own drink. "I needed that."

"Sure, sure," replied Spike, the smug undercurrent of 'you owe me' that accompanied even the slightest of favors between the two drifting across as always. "So . . . whaddya think?"

"I," began the dark-haired vampire slowly, flipping open an atlas on his lap and staring at a heavily annotated map of Des Moines, "I think that we have quite a ways to go."

"Butttt . . ."

"But so far, so good. Come on – we need to switch vehicles and get into place for the next step."

"Aye, aye, captain," snarked Spike, throwing a sarcastic salute. He turned the key in the ignition and shifted into reverse. For a moment, the caustic façade faded, just long enough for him to ask, "You think it's gonna work?"

Angel's own calm mask slipped for a moment, revealing the tension and worry lurking beneath. "Yes," he said after a long pause, and if his teeth were gritted once again, this time it was not from irritation. He glanced to the left, meeting the gaze of his on and off again antagonist, roommate, romantic rival, vampire grand-child, and occasional friend. "I think it has to."

. . . TBC . . .


	9. Chapter 9

Illyria hummed to herself as she navigated the twelve-foot long ambulance into the loading bay of the Polk County Jail. Thus far, the plan was proceeding in an easier fashion than she anticipated, and she had been expecting what the Burkle had once evocatively defined to her as a "cakewalk." Still humming, she tugged the zip on her navy "Department of the State Medical Examiner" jumpsuit up the last two inches that it had slipped during her drive.

For the last several hours, the former god-king had lurked (as instructed) in the garage of the Des Moines City morgue until the call to action came in. When the medical examiner's overnight investigator went to suit up and start the car, a demon was waiting for her, blue-eyed and blue-haired, with small dancing flames held about half an inch above each of her palms. Illyria had allowed the woman to babble in panic for fifteen seconds until she had captured her voice print, and then she had knocked the woman unconscious and tossed her into the back of the ME's truck. After securing her prisoner to one of the gurneys in the rear of the ambulance, she administered an intravenous sedative from the collection of goodies in the black bag that she then threw into the front seat. Easy as pie. Easy as cake. Easy as . . . _cakewalk_?

Now, her drive finished, Illyria vanished all of the blue, shifting her illusion into the form of the Burkle and the uniform of the investigator. Satisfied, the ancient demon moved the unconscious woman into the front seat. She arranged her against the glass window so that she appeared to be sleeping and waited impatiently at the open rear doors of the truck for the FBI agents to arrive with her cargo.

She twiddled her mental thumbs for ten minutes before the feds finally showed up, pushing two stretchers with matching black body bags atop them. Illyria was gruff, terse, in the manner of the unconscious investigator up front as she greeted the agents.

"Morning," she said stiffly. It was nearly five a.m. No mortal in their right minds was cheerful at five a.m. Then again, the Old One mused in a deep quadrant of her brain, few mortals actually existed in what she would term a "right mind."

"Good morning," replied one of the agents, an older man who stood about 5'10" and had flecks of black in his grey beard.

"Two for the M.E.'s office?"

"Yes." The second agent replied this time. He was a tall, willowy young man with wavy hair that was definitely non-federal, and Illyria could imagine that some of the foolish Vampire Slayers who she had been dragged into working with might find him attractive. There was little that Illyria personally found attractive. Except for power.

The Old One pulled out a clipboard and removed a ballpoint pen from beneath the binder clip at the top. "You got names for me?" she asked, businesslike.

The agents glanced back and forth between one another. "This is a very important, somewhat sensitive case . . ." began the younger fed.

Illyria raised one eyebrow. Medical examiner investigators might generally have to put up with this sort of nonsense, but she was an ancient demonic deity who had once ruled over nearly half the surface area of this biped-encrusted planet. "Sorry, folks." Her tone was anything but sorry. "I got protocols. You know how it goes. Can't take 'em nowhere unless they got names. Only counts as a John Doe if it's a John Doe in your system. If you've got a name, I gotta have it."

The men exchanged another look, and then the shorter, older one said, "Faith Lehane," pointing to the less-full of the two body bags, "and Dean Winchester."

"Thank you," said Illyria, scribbling the names down on her clipboard. She retriever the two collapsible gurneys out of her truck and moved Lehane's body onto one and Winchester's onto the other. Then, one stretcher at at time, she pushed and lifted them back up into the van.

"You need a hand?" offered one of the agents, too late.

"No thanks," replied the former god-king. "Gotta give Uncle Sam his money's worth. You know how it goes."

"Huh." The older agent chuckled a few times, rather half-heartedly.

Illyria didn't blame him. It hadn't been that funny of a joke. Once she had both gurneys strapped down into their places, she turned to the agents and smiled. "Thanks again! Always appreciate your business." She closed the rear doors on the truck and locked them securely. Then, fake smile still in place, she climbed up into the cab of the truck and pulled away.

Watching for a tail in her rear view mirror, the ancient demon drove for ten miles and then pulled off into the far quadrant of a Walmart super-center parking lot. She administered another dose of sedative into her hostage's jugular vein and then crawled over the front seat into the back of the truck, dragging her black bag after her.

"Okay, here we go," muttered Illyria to herself.

She stepped in between the two gurneys, which had thankfully remained belted to the sides of the truck during the drive. There was only about eighteen inches of space in between them. Luckily, Winifred Burkle had been a slender woman. Working methodically, the Old One unzipped first one body bag and then the other to reveal a pair of familiar faces.

As she stared down at the corpses, Illyria cocked her head to one side, allowing the blue to fade back into her hair and skin. She trailed a single finger along the length of Faith's cheek in a rare moment of sentimentality.

Sentiment dispensed with, the Old One deposited her bag on the gurney next to the Slayer and rummaged in it for two syringes filled with a bright green fluid. She jammed the first syringe into Faith's neck and pushed in its contents to the slow count of "one, two, three," and then did the same thing with the second syringe to Dean Winchester. Then Illyria lifted her hands, crackling with blue lightning, and placed one in the center of each person's chest. She exhaled and then, rolling her eyes, said, "Clear."

Lightning danced along her skin and plunged into the corpses. The bodies leapt six inches off of their respective stretchers, and were only kept from falling onto the floor by the heavy nylon straps buckling them to the gurneys.

Illyria snapped her fingers and began counting again, "One, two, three, four . . ."

On "five," the antidote took effect. To her left, brown eyes blinked open, accompanied by another jerk against the restraints. The Slayer rolled onto her side and vomited. On Illyria's right, Dean Winchester's hands began clenching and unclenching as the human gasped for air.

"Oh, God," mumbled the man, scrabbling against the nylon straps keeping him from sitting up. His fingernails scratched feebly against the hard plastic until Illyria took pity on the human and undid them.

"You recognize me at last," purred the former god-king, helping the hunter up into a sitting position. Then she turned to assist Lehane, who was carefully navigating her way out of a puddle of lilac-colored vomit.

"It worked," exhaled the Slayer, startled and relieved. She grabbed the Old One by the empty belt loops on her Medical Examiner jumpsuit and yanked her in to press hers lips against the former god-king's. After a brief moment, Faith released her with an exultant, "Oh, God, it worked."

"We're not done yet," said Winchester, managing to sound both amused and nauseated. He attempted to push off from the stretcher too quickly and half-collapsed when his head began spinning wildly.

Illyria caught him under the armpits, her mouth a moue of distaste as she held him off of the ground. The man was heavier than he looked.

Faith darted in. "Here, I'll take him." She relieved the nonplussed Old One of the burden of the hunter.

"Come on, dumbass." The Slayer pushed Winchester back against the wall of the truck, forcing him to sit on his own. "You took less of Willow's magic crap than I did. You can be a grown up and support your own damn weight."

"Can I?" asked Dean, more than a little delirious.

"Yeah." Faith slapped him three times in the face – left, right, left. "You awake now?"

"Yeah." He caught her hand before she could smack him a fourth time. "I'm awake. What was _that _for?"

"Can't be sleeping, sunshine," said Faith, already following Illyria towards the cab of the truck. She helped her to manhandle the poor investigator over the seat back and into Dean's body bag, managing to tread heavily on the hunter's toes as she went. "We got a lotta work to do."

Dean lifted the woman's legs and buckled the bottom set of straps while Faith fixed the nylon bands around the unconscious woman's stomach and chest. "Sammy," he said in a low growl.

"Check-in's in thirty minutes. We'll get a better idea then. Did they let you see him?"

"No." Dean shook his head. "You?"

"I heard him." Faith glanced down at the dingy white prison socks on her feet. She was not entirely comfortable admitting to this part. "He's not doing great, Dean. He needs out of there."

Dean swore under his breath. "Dammit."

The former god-king leaned over the back of the seat. "Hey. Mud monkeys. Time to go. Come on."

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Dean muttered, clambering over the seat after Faith.

Before the Slayer could answer, Illyria interjected, "I've got a flamethrower. Will that help?"

Dean gazed at her, wide-eyed in a mixture of amazement and apprehension. "Yeah," he mused after a second. "That should do the trick."

"Good," said Illyria. "Now _move_."

All three squished together in the front seat, knees and shoulders and hips knocking together. They drove around to the front of the Walmart parking lot, where Illyria changed her illusion to jeans and a t-shirt. She hurried inside the store and came out ten minutes later with two bags full of black clothing. Back over the seat went the hunter and the Slayer. They scrambled out of the prison duds and into the goth t-shirts, pants, socks, and cheap boots that Illyria had purchased for them. Then they left the parking lot again, this time for good.

Fifteen minutes later, and it was time for check-in. Illyria looked over from the steering wheel to hand Faith a chunky black burner cell phone. "It's number three on speed-dial," she said without taking her eyes off of the road.

Gulping, Faith pressed the '3' key and held it down while the call rang out. A warm rush of relief washed over her when a familiar voice answered.

"'Ello. Who's this?"

The Slayer exhaled and felt her intestines relax a fraction. "You know who it is, you beautiful peroxide disaster."

"Glad you're feeling better," replied Spike. "You were a bit boring last time I saw you."

Faith chuckled. "Hard to be entertaining when you're dead."

There came an awkward pause, and then the Slayer muttered, "Sorry."

It sounded as though the vampire was smothering laughter. "'S alright. You wanna talk to Captain Forehead? He is, after all, the un-entertaining dead one."

"That'd be great."

"Yep. Hang on."

"Faith?" Angel questioned, holding the phone against his ear.

The Slayer grinned. Damn, but it was good to hear that voice again. "Howdy do, handsome. You all in one piece?"

"Yes. You?"

Her grin widened. "Five by five."

To Angel's credit, the next words out of his mouth were, "And Dean? Is he five by five, too?"

"He's more like six foot plus change by six foot plus change. Oof." Faith grunted as she was elbowed in the ribs. "Watch it, cowboy," she snapped at Dean, elbowing him back for good measure.

Dean grimaced, but continued to gesture urgently. What for, Faith did not entirely know, but she could hazard a guess.

With a brief sigh, she asked, "Any word on Sam? Dean's verging on the impatient over here."

"They agreed to move him," answered Angel. "We've switched from Vehicle A to Vehicles B through D. We've got a good look on the road out. We'll call when they leave, update you on what direction they're heading."

"Good," said Faith. She lowered her voice slightly although that would not protect her from Dean's laser-like stare in the slightest. "How was he – Sam? He still seeing things?"

"Yes," Angel admitted with a frown. "He recognized Spike though, which was a touch of good fortune."

"Touch of _something_," muttered the Slayer under her breath. "Okay. Let's keep in touch."

"You got it. Hey, uh, Faith?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're not dead."

The Slayer snorted. "No touchy-feely nonsense, big guy. You remember the rules." She paused, then went on, "I'm glad I'm not dead, too."

* * *

They drove and drove for the next hour or so, slowly making concentric circles in a three-mile perimeter around the jail. At last, Angel called back with instructions from his and Spike's vantage point.

The Feds had finally left the building in a herd of black Suburbans. They were pulling out onto 51st and would likely turn right onto Northeast 22nd. That was the way that Team: Rescue Sam had been hoping they would take. It was a quick shot from 22nd onto the 235, and then they could take I-35 all the way north to Minneapolis. Time to go.

Illyria jerked the medical examiner's truck into a full on spin, whipping around the small neighborhood street. She slammed the accelerator down to the floor boards and shot through yellow lights until they reached 22nd. The road was mostly empty in the pale gray before the dawn, and the Old One twisted the wheel sharply. That sent the truck into another spin, and after twenty nauseating seconds, they came to a halt across three lanes of traffic. They had ditched the civilian in an alley as soon as Angel gave the final call. Now, Faith and Dean pulled black balaclavas over their faces while Illyria dropped the illusion of the boring navy jumpsuit in favor of her familiar mahogany body armor and blue-tinged skin and hair.

After a brief tussle over who would get to carry the flamethrower (Faith argued that as Dean had more experience with rifles, he should play sniper and let her play with fire; Dean argued that he had always wanted a flamethrower, and with Illyria bringing Christmas three months early, Faith had better hand the damn thing over, _right this second_, or there would be trouble), Dean had finally won, and he hopped down from the back of the vehicle, flamethrower in hand.

They did not have long to wait. Within five minutes, a cavalcade of seemingly endless black SUVs was pulling up, forced to stop in the face of the box truck, which had bright blue flames creeping up along its wheel wells. Faith and Dean stood at either end of the vehicle: Dean with his flamethrower and Faith with a semi-automatic rifle cradled familiarly in her arms, both masked by their balaclavas. Masks aside, they realized there was danger in the recognizable truck, but that was a risk they had decided to take.

Illyria floated two feet in the air above the vehicle's roof, her hair blown back in a wind that only existed around her immediate person. Blossoms of blue fire spouted from her hands, and she stood upon a disk of cobalt flames. Lightning crackled between her fingertips and her feet, and even her eyes seemed to glow. In the dim light of the street lamps above, the effect was spooky, and Faith almost felt unsettled. For half an instant, the Slayer could understand why primordial man had worshiped the ancient demon. She_ definitely_ knew how to use her bells and whistles.

The SUVs came to a jerking halt, barely managing to avoid crashing into one another. While Illyria and her blazing flames looked on, the two Suburbans at the rear attempted to turn around. A giant cattle trailer came roaring up from behind them and then screeched its way diagonally across 22nd street, blocking off the retreat. Barely had the cattle trailer slammed on its brakes when an additional two figures, clad from head to toe in all black with matching dusters leapt down from the cab.

Between the two of them, the figures carried four machine guns in their black-gloved hands. Immediately opening fire on the five SUVs, they aimed for the tires and hit with disturbing accuracy.

"Oh, my God," whispered JJ from the shotgun seat of the front Suburban. And then it was mass chaos.

FBI agents and local LEOs spilled out of the vehicles, taking up tactical positions as best they could. Being surrounded on both sides made that difficult. Morgan, sitting in the middle SUV with the prisoner, put a heavy hand on the back of Sam Winchester's neck and shoved him down in between the seats and the floorboards.

"What do you think, boss?" Prentiss edged up on Hotchner's left. Her knuckles were white where they wrapped around the grip of her service weapon.

"I think," Hotchner replied sourly, "that we've been had."

The two figures with machine guns continued to advance. There was an eruption of gunfire as the law enforcement officers attempted to shoot back. To their growing dismay, the figures - likely men, Hotch reasoned quickly, based on their height - made no attempt to duck out of the way. Each was pierced by half a dozen rounds, the bullets slamming into their shoulders and chests and bellies, but still they continued to move.

As they came to the car that had made it furthest back along 22nd, they opened the doors and forced the two remaining officers inside to get out. Then they herded them towards the others and the next Suburban. For a moment, the FBI agents were flustered, unable to shoot the human shields. The next moment, they had bigger troubles to worry about.

The other two people in black, the ones who were up at the front and probably male and female based on the sizes, had begun moving as well. The shorter one - the _woman_? - shot out the tires on the two SUVs closest to her while the man did something to the large black cylinder in his arms. Suddenly the air was filled with the smell of diesel fumes as a heavy stream of angry orange-red flames shot out of the end of the cylinder. Someone screamed.

In the noise and confusion, the two men with the machine guns continued moving inexorably forward. Three SUVs in, they found Morgan and Sam Winchester. The latter was manacled at the wrists and ankles, a heavy hood pulled out of his face.

"Out," snapped one of the machine gun men. When Morgan did not instantly move, the other man reached in, grabbed the front of his Kevlar vest, and hauled him easily out of the car before throwing him to the ground like he was weightless. Then the man leaned back in to pull out Sam Winchester.

Heedless of the bullets whizzing all around them, the two men herded Winchester in front of them and shepherded him back towards the cattle truck while the man with the flamethrower began firing on the empty SUVs. FBI agents and local LEOs were forced to scatter when the first vehicle exploded. They could not go too far, however, as the road was still blocked on either side.

_Bam! _With a loud thud, the ramp on the cattle truck dropped down to the ground, and an Audi Q7 shot out. The remaining machine gun man threw Sam Winchester into the back seat, and the car zipped along the asphalt, picking up the woman with the rifle, the man with the flamethrower, and then finally the stuntwoman with the blue flames. The SUV slipped past the edge of the medical examiner's truck and sped off, leaving gasping, astounded FBI agents behind them, hurriedly scrambling for their phones and calling for backup.

Spike at the wheel, driving like a madman, Team Rescue Sam hurtled up the highway. They took the third exit, turned off into a commuter parking lot, and switched into a Jeep Grand Cherokee that Illyria had put into position earlier that night. The swap took less than thirty seconds, and then they were off again.

They drove for another hour in the Jeep until they reached a private airfield. A Cessna Sovereign, its body and wings painted a light heather gray, was waiting for them there. The six rushed to climb in, the morning sun adding urgency. In the passenger cabin, there were three seats on either side of the main aisle. As the others hustled to claim their places, Illyria touched Sam Winchester's chains, which rusted away into dust.

Faith sat next to Angel while Dean collapsed beside Sam. Spike took the seat on the other side of Faith, and Illyria sat on Dean's left. They buckled their seat-belts, and the blond vampire yelled to the man in the cockpit – an employee of Buffy's rich warlock boyfriend. Just before lift-off, Illyria jabbed yet another needle into the side of Dean's neck, and the anxious hunter went slack.

Spike raised an eyebrow. "Was that necessary?"

"Yes," said Sam and Faith in unison. They shared an awkward glance of understanding.

As the plane took off, Faith used the upward acceleration as an excuse to lean sideways against Angel. He raised one eyebrow at her. _You okay?_

The Slayer slugged him gently in the upper arm. _Fine._

"Right," said Spike with a long exhale, getting comfortable. He ditched his balaclava and gloves and folded his arms behind his head. "We got any of them little bottles on this trip?"

"Little bottles?" said Sam sluggishly. It was hard to focus, much less hallucinate, when there were vampires and ancient demons surrounding him and being distracting.

"You know – little bottles, glug glug, glug glug," he mimed downing a miniature bottle of alcohol.

"I don't think so, sorry," said Angel, who had investigated the galley before taking his seat but had not been planning on advertising it.

"Well, nothing for it, then, I guess," Spike shrugged. "Time for karaoke."

"Veto," said Faith and Illyria in concert.

Still, the blond refused to be dissuaded. He hummed slightly under his breath until Faith jammed her elbow into his throat and held it there for thirty long seconds.

Sam listened while the vampires, Illyria, and Faith bickered back and forth. The Slayer squished herself until her back was up against Angel's shoulder. She wiggled and wriggled until the vampire finally gave in, lifting his arm and pulling her against his chest. Not quite in the perfect position yet, Faith swung her legs up into Spike's lap. The blond patted her shins absentmindedly, his black-tipped nails blending in with the dark material of her jeans.

Illyria watched everyone – all the time, looking like something out of Xena Warrior Princess. There was something undeniably alien about her. Perhaps it was her eyes, cold and distant. She regarded the mortal passengers as if from far, far away. Still, the look on her face whenever she turned to Spike was almost fond.

* * *

When the hunter woke a few hours later, there was music playing from somewhere overhead. Sam recognized it as the same Meatloaf album that had rattled around the backseat of the Impala for the last twenty years. He was always surprised when it wound its way back into the stereo again – Sam could never quite believe that his brother hadn't ditched that tape a decade ago. But then, he reconsidered, Dean did always have a soft spot for the ballads, no matter how much he might attempt to deny it.

Faith was sitting upright now, no longer sprawled across two vampires. She had a bright sheen to her skin, a hyperactive excitement that Sam recognized as that of the overly wrought up, about-to-run-out-of-gas variety. The Slayer was cruising for a crash, but in the meantime her crimson nails were tapping on the leg of her black jeans as she and Spike sang along to the music with quiet gusto. A bottle of suspiciously amber-colored liquid was cradled in the gentle embrace of the vampire's arms. Sam wondered vaguely where on earth they had produced it from.

"And some nights I pray for silence, and some nights I pray for soulllll," they dragged the 'l' out along with Meatloaf until the poor consonant begged for mercy. "Some nights I just pray to the gods of sex and drums and rock'n'roll." Slayer and vampire strummed frantically at their air guitars in perfect sync.

Looking up, Faith caught sight of Sam gazing at her from across the aisle, his brother still slumped against his shoulder, and looked momentarily embarrassed. Sam did not get that – he had heard her caterwauling along to far worse tunes on the radio than "I Would Do Anything For Love."

Faith jerked her head to one side, indicating his older brother, and raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

Confused, Sam shrugged.

The woman attempted to make another gesture with her head and then gave up. "You okay?" she said aloud, slipping through the a brief pause in the sing-through as Meatloaf guitar-soloed his way to glory.

"Yeah."

"He still hanging around?"

There was no need to play the pronoun game. Thankfully, Sam could shake his head. "No."

"Good. Dean'll be glad."

And that was it. The one thing that bound them; also the thing that Sam knew deep down was part of why he and Faith had never quite managed to become great friends – his brother.

Unaware of his introspection, Faith threw her head back and belted out the chorus, grabbing Angel's hand and squeezing the bones together until he joined in with her and Spike, much to Illyria's snorting amusement.

"I poured it on, and I poured it out," sang Spike. He held out an imaginary microphone to Faith.

"I tried to show you just how much I care." Her voice grew louder. "I'm tired of words, and I'm too hoarse to shout."

They glared at Angel until he conceded, "But you've been cold to me so long, I'm crying icicles instead of tears." The vampire traced vertical lines down over his cheeks to his chin.

"Take it away, Sam!" hollered Faith.

There was nothing to do but surrender. The hunter took a deep breath, "And all I can do is keep on telling you -"

Spike waved his imaginary microphone grandly. "Everybody!"

All four launched into song together, and this time Illyria even joined them. "I want yoo-oo, I need yoo-oo. But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you!" Angel and Faith sang this last line to one another.

The Slayer turned to Spike and shook her finger in his face. "Now don't be sad."

"Don't be sad," echoed the vampire in a high-pitched falsetto.

"'Cause two out of three ain't bad," they finished.

"Now don't be sad," Sam and Illyria sang.

It was Angel's turn to take the echo, "Don't be sad." His upper register was surprisingly good.

Everyone concluded together, "'Cause two out of three ain't bad."

"Oh. My. God," grunted Dean Winchester blearily, lifting his head from Sam's shoulder and glaring at all five of them. "I frigging can't believe it. You figured out a way to make flying worse."


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at last, the final chapter! Thanks to everyone who has read, commented, subscribed, bookmarked, or left kudos! I greatly appreciate all of your feedback. Not sure what my next project will be, but I'm always open to Faith & Dean prompts! :)

**September 16th, 2012, Des Moines, Iowa, 8:30 a.m.**

_"What the hell?" _Morgan stared after the Audi as it disappeared onto the freeway. He limped over the asphalt to Prentiss, and once he had reassured himself of her safety, he trekked the twenty yards to the SUV that Reid and Rossi had been in. His earpiece was crackling in his ear.

In a moment or two, he would need to find a phone and let Garcia know that the team was all in one piece. No need to freak his Baby Girl out unnecessarily. She had been on the coms, joking around with JJ, when everything went down. Morgan knew from experience that she was likely panicking now.

Reinforcements arrived, sirens blaring, five minutes too late and coming from the wrong direction. As emergency personnel set up a first-aid tent to begin treating all the scrapes and scratches from the incident (miraculously, no one had actually been shot), the BAU team slowly regrouped, their ears still ringing from the gunfire. Nearly everyone had road rash or lacerations from shattered glass or exploding SUVS, but they were all more or less safe. Good. Morgan stepped away briefly to call Penelope.

When he returned, the others were murmuring quietly together.

"I don't understand any of this." Emily rubbed at the gauze-wrapped cut on her left forearm, winced in pain, and then continued to rub it anyway.

"Hotch -" Morgan threw in his own angry two cents. "What just happened?

The senior federal agent wiped grime and drying blood off of his forehead. He had been struck by debris during the firefight. Under different circumstances, he would have been shocked that none of the law enforcement personnel had been pierced by any one of the hundreds of bullets that had been flying through the air. Now, having had the distinctly uncomfortable experience that had been the last few days, it all seemed to make some grim kind of sense. "I'll tell you what happened," he said to his team as they huddled together underneath the first-aid tent. "We just got Winchester'd."

* * *

**September 16th, 2012, San Francisco, California, 1:00 p.m.**

When the Cessna landed, there was a car waiting for them on the tarmac - yet another black SUV with heavily tinted windows. As it was early afternoon, Angel and Spike pulled back on their balaclavas and gloves and held their black dusters over their heads as they rushed down the mobile stairway down to the steady earth below and across the asphalt into the back seat of the SUV. The others followed at a more sedate pace. Illyria strolled forwards, eating up the middle ground with her quick stride, while Faith, Sam, and Dean lollygagged.

Sam's head was feeling a bit clearer. Perhaps it was the presence of his brother (or maybe sitting near an actual demon of great power) but the Devil had not shown his face or worn anyone else's face for the entirety of their flight. For the first time in a while, Sam had been able to focus, and to join in the sarcastic sing-along, to tease his brother a little bit about his plane-phobia, to watch Dean studiously not get jealous as Faith got more than a little handsy with the vampires on either side of her.

_Sometimes,_ he thought, taking the shotgun seat at the Slayer's hollered direction, grateful to be able to stretch his legs instead of confined to the far back of the SUV like the vampires. Spike and Angel had wrapped themselves in the giant blankets left in the car by whoever had sent it, and only the glint of their eyes was visible.

_Sometimes,_ Sam repeated the word in his mind as he buckled his seat belt. Sometimes being around his brother and the Slayer was incredibly annoying. Not solely because they kept secrets from him, including important secrets, like what they did to Amy Pond and her son. It was hard to have something that he was excluded from where Dean was concerned, something that he could not belong to or be a part of. Dean had the occasional tendency toward being an over-sharer where women were involved, but here, Sam was on the outside.

Still, despite all the things that he did not like – and there were many – at other times, Sam did get a kick out of watching his brother and Faith navigate whatever it was between them that they didn't talk about. Not least because it opened up endless opportunities for teasing.

Once everyone was in the car and buckled, Faith leaned forward from her seat behind Sam, reaching across Dean (who had somehow gotten stuck with the hump) and said to the driver, "Will, you're an absolute life-saver. That tingle juice thing you gave us really worked!"

Sam surveyed the woman sitting next to him curiously. This must be Willow, the red-haired witch who he vaguely knew was Best Friends Forevuh with Buffy and perhaps the one exception to Dean's anti-witch rules.

"Happy to help," replied the ginger woman, in a tone that suggested she really would rather have not given Faith whatever the heck that "tingle juice" thing was that the Slayer was referring to. "I see you brought lots of friends."

"What better than a party?" said Faith, leaning back again. Sam was tall enough to peer into the rear-view mirror, and he caught sight of Dean's hand slowly sliding over from his leg to rest on the Slayer's knee. Faith remained expressionless, her left hand gradually migrating sideways to cover his as she continued talking to Willow. Her fingers curved downwards, nails pressing into the man's skin. "Who all's at the compound?"

"The usual suspects," answered Willow easily, sounding far more comfortable now that they were off the subject of her role as procurer of potentially lethal, quasi-magical substances. "Buffy and Daniel, of course. Dawn's up for the weekend from LA, as are Xander and Andrew." She paused and then added, "Heads up, Xander and Dawn are still doing the awkward dance of the used-to-date."

"And soon there will be two more," Faith grinned. She tipped her head to indicate the vampires in the back seat.

"I heard that," grumbled Angel, his voice muffled by the blanket.

"Yeah," echoed Spike. "And for the record, can't speak for Captain Forehead here, but I am officially over the Buff."

"Buffy and I agreed to go our separate ways a long time ago," Angel said loftily.

Faith and Willow snorted with laughter and rolled their eyes at one another in the rearview mirror, while Illyria announced, deadpan, "They're lying, by the way."

"Blue!"

"Unhelpful, Illyria."

"Very helpful, I think," said Faith. "Speaking of awkward dancing . . ." Her tone was light with daring.

_Oh, no,_ thought Sam grimly. He had a sickening feeling that there was no way that this was going to be good.

". . . you see Kennedy lately?" finished the Slayer, her formerly conspiratorial grin having shifted into something a bit more predatory.

"I came out to drive you back to Daniel's ranch, and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now," replied the witch. "Kennedy and I have been over for years. You know that, Faith. And if we're gonna talk about dating," she continued, with a sneaky sideways glance into the rear view mirror, "what about you?"

"What about me?" asked Faith innocently, her hand still resting on top of Dean's. Sam watched as she moved it away, leaving five perfectly matched semi-circular red marks etched deep into the skin.

Willow changed lanes on the interstate and fired back, "You and Dean have been dating for years. Everyone knows it but you two."

"We _are_?" gasped Faith, bringing her other hand to her chest in shock.

Dean's jaw dropped open comically, his chin nearly reaching the notch in his sternum. "We _have_?"

"Don't you owe me flowers or something?" the Slayer asked, turning a pair of anime-wide brown eyes on the man sitting next to her, but there was a bite of anger beneath her overly-flirty tone.

"Or something," agreed Dean in his best gravel-crunching voice, somehow managing to turn those two innocuous words into a come-on.

As everyone except for Illyria groaned, Sam reflected that this –_ this here_ – was why his brother and the Slayer were _so_. _damn_. _annoying_.

* * *

The wizard's place was too gigantic by half. It covered at least a hundred acres, and amongst the glorious manicured gardens, there sat a giant house of glistening white stucco with a row of tall elms leading up the gravel drive and stately Greek columns lining the wide front veranda. Down the hill a little ways was a large red barn, three stories tall if it was an inch. Willow called the building a barn, but it was roughly half the size of a big box store, and its garage doors were large and wide enough to fit the private plane that they had flown in on.

Buffy and her new beau met them inside the garage, and Daniel was the very picture of California Tech Bro graciousness. He welcomed all of them in their varying states of disarray and showed them to the large rooms ringed with bunk beds where they would be staying.

In spite of the early afternoon light filtering through the enspelled windows, the humans expressed a need for showers and sleep. Faith expressed hers a little more forcefully than the others, and so she was in and out of the Hilton-sized shower and wrapped up tight in a fluffy white robe before the Winchester brothers had finished awkwardly negotiating who would be taking which bed.

Passing by the open door of the men's dormitory, Faith caught an earful of stilted conversation and rolled her eyes. Those boys. They were too damn dysfunctional.

And, speaking of dysfunction, now that Sam was safe and sound and entering his post-jailbird dysfunctional phase, once the Slayer had got all nice and caught up on her resting, she and Winchester older version were going to have a little talk. One that mainly consisted of her fists hitting his guts and his ass hitting the ground. Over, and over, and over again.

Selecting the bed in the darkest corner of the empty women's dorm, the Slayer made herself a nest of blankets. Buffy had wordlessly handed her a lethally pointed stake and a new dagger in a brown leather sheath upon her arrival, and Faith tucked these against her body, letting them dangle loosely in her relaxed grip. She inhaled and exhaled, allowing herself to feel more secure than she had since leaving for Iowa a few days ago. Finally, Faith slept.

But not for long.

* * *

**3:48 p.m.**

"Hey."

"_Wha -_" a heavy exhale of frustration, and the duvet was pulled down to expose an angry brown eye, the tip of a nose, and four inches of jagged, serrated steel. "B, I came this close to murdering you." The duvet slipped down further, revealing the matching eye, the rest of the nose, and a peevish frown as the dagger was reluctantly lowered and slipped back beneath a pillow. "No interrupting sleepy time, remember?"

Perched on the edge of Faith's bed, Buffy smiled tightly and ignored this injunction. Instead, she pursued a line of questioning that had been on her mind for the last solid hour. "Will said you had an interesting car ride."

Faith paused, pondering over the underlying meaning of that sentence, but she was too exhausted to play brain games. "Something like that." She sat up in the bunk, careful not to bonk her skull on the wooden slats overhead. "I owe your guy like, all the flowers or thank you notes or something. Something huge. We wouldn't've – we _couldn't've_ made it out of there without his help."

"Don't worry," said Buffy. "I thanked him." Something in the way she smirked told Faith exactly how those thanks had been delivered.

"Wow," the brunette raised her eyebrows and grinned. "Guess Spike was right all those years ago about you no longer being Little Miss Tightly Wound."

"And you're not Miss Anger Management anymore, are you?"

Once upon a time, those words might have stung. Now, Faith only laughed, "Always. Just better at it these days."

"Yeah." Buffy smiled back at her, and for a moment the Slayers could sit in peace, content to be as they were in the present, and the ghosts of the past were quiet. But then Buffy had to go and clear her throat and ruin things. "About that . . . the anger management thing . . ."

"What?" Faith could feel her hackles rising and the old habit to become defensive was more than a little tempting. She thought that she had been doing a pretty spectacular job of managing her anger lately, all things considered.

"Is something going on with you and Dean? I mean, like more than whatever's usually going on between you and him? 'Cause, to be honest, we all had bets going about whether the two of you would camp out in your bed or his. And now Dawn's winning, and I just had to pay her twenty bucks."

The younger Slayer shook her head. Nope, she was a hundred and ten percent not doing this right now. Whatever she was going to do about Dean, whatever ass-kicking was going to ensue, it was entirely Faith's decision to make. She was _not_ going to allow any pot stirring, no matter who it was attempting to grab a spatula. Things with Buffy might be going better lately, but that did not mean that they were besties who gossiped about their relationships. For one, Faith would actually have to have a relationship, which she clearly did not.

To change the subject, she remarked, "I know you said it's cool, but look, I massively owe you and your boy for all the resources and Hail Mary's you've been throwing my way. What can I do? I feel like I need to do something."

"So stay," said Buffy with a shrug and another smile, choosing to let her question drop for the moment. "Hang out here for a few weeks. Help me and Daniel do some fall cleaning."

"And by fall-cleaning, you mean . . . " Faith's voice trailed away. She had a fairly good idea, but she still liked to make Buffy use specifics. Specifics were good. Clear expectations in advance helped keep everything from going pear-shaped later.

"Clean out some vampire nests, take down demon gangs, the usual." Buffy's smile was like liquid sunshine. Somewhere in the depths of her exhausted brain, Faith wondered how the blonde managed it.

She pointed out slowly, "I've got half a place in Cleveland."

"I know."

"And another half place in London," she added.

"And whatever room there in whatever muscle car your boy's driving, huh?"

"Sometimes," answered Faith, her mouth twisting uncomfortably at the corners. Dang it, but she really did need to sort things out with Dean. Which she would. When she woke up. Which hopefully would be in about three days from now, if people ever shut up and let her pass out and stay passed out.

Thankfully, Buffy took the hint for space. "Okay," she allowed. "Well, how about a month? We could really settle Hell in a month."

"You mean raise Hell, don't you?" Faith was grinning again. It never got old, getting along with B. It was always such a . . . pleasant surprise.

"Yeah," said Buffy, returning the smile, "I think I do."

Finally, Buffy left, and Faith was allowed to sleep.

* * *

The Slayer drifted back into consciousness six hours later to a dark, empty room, and the demanding rumble of her stomach. Throwing the covers back, she peeled herself out of the bunk bed and padded barefoot along the gallery until she came to the stairs that led to the ground floor, where the kitchen, full-sized basketball court, and combination boxing arena/ballet studio were located. A faint light was on in the kitchen, and the person that she had been hoping most to avoid was sitting at the yellow pine table, staring at a full bottle of Kentucky's finest of wild turkeys.

Faith paused in the doorway and cleared her throat. Dean's head jerked around so quickly that the woman wondered if he would give himself whiplash. A series of emotions raced across his face in quick succession: confusion, relief, embarrassment, and frustration, finally settling on something that was more or less neutral. Not entirely sure of her own feelings, Faith returned the mostly emotionless gaze. The hunter turned back around, and she watched the back of his head for a long stretch of awkward silence.

At length, the man spoke, "I haven't had any." He nodded towards the bourbon. "If that's what you're wondering."

Easing her way around the table, Faith let that volley slide. After pulling out one of the chairs, the woman sat. "How's Sam?"

"Sleeping," was the terse reply.

"You want to talk?" she probed.

"I got a choice?" he fired back.

The Slayer considered this briefly, then decided, "No. Not really."

For another endless moment, they stared at one another across the polished surface of the wooden table, faces grim, expressions shuttered. Out of habit, Faith chewed on the inside of her cheek. Maybe it was fatigue, or the magical death juice, or just the utterly bizarro world of staying with rich people, but her insides felt raw. Watching Dean's closed-off, eerily empty eyes, she could guess that he was feeling raw, too. That muscle pulsing in his cheek was not doing so out of an overabundance of joy, after all.

"I think we -" she started at the same time that he said, "I need a break."

"Oh." Faith's scrambled thoughts had explored along similar lines in the last few days, but it rather hurt to hear him say it. Foolishly, she had grown used to not being rejected by him.

Dean went on, "You and me, we're not good for each other right now."

The Slayer gave him a hard, sharp look, then said in a quiet voice, "Go on."

Glancing away, the man addressed his next words to the bourbon. "I keep screwing up," he admitted. "Ever since the Leviathans showed up, ever since . . ."

_Since Castiel died_, Faith's Winchester-mind-reading superpowers manifested themselves, but she let him continue to fumble.

"Ever since . . . well, ever since then, things have just been going from bad to worse. I didn't want to drag you into this - into any of it. Bobby pulled you in when Sam an' me got holed up in Whitefish, and then I insisted we go up to Bozeman, and then Sam and I got you into this thing with the Leviathans -"

Truth required that she interrupt him here. "The _Leviathans _dragged me into this thing with the Leviathans, Dean. Not you."

"Yeah," he was willing to agree to that much, at least, "but they wouldn't have known who you were or how to find you if you hadn't come to Montana."

Much to her frustration, she had to allow that the man had a point.

"And I keep asking myself," Dean continued, "is it my fault that you got caught up in this, or is it your fault for getting carried away?"

The Slayer inhaled with a sharp hiss. "_Bozeman_."

"If you hadn't been with me, I think I would've still gone after that kitsune, but . . . I don't know. And maybe, maybe Sam wouldn't have taken off, and this whole FBI thing could have been avoided, and -"

"And maybe you could have skipped your whole little bender, too, or _do you not remember that part_?" she snarled through half-gritted teeth.

"See?" said Dean miserably. "It's all screwed up."

Still angry, the woman ran a hand through her rumpled brown hair and pointed out, "I'm not the one who's been drugging other people."

"No," he sighed, "but you were the one who killed that kitsune kid."

Faith's expression went utterly, painfully blank. It felt as though she had just been kicked in the chest by a rampaging buffalo. "I did what had to be done," she said after a moment. Her damn voice threatened to wobble and betray her, but she whipped it back into line.

"And that's what I thought I was doing with the drugs and stuff. 'Course, I might have been a little drunk at the time," the hunter admitted in an undertone.

"A _little?_" Faith snapped.

"Okay," he conceded. "A lot."

They glared at one another. Finally, the Slayer looked away for a few seconds while she thought, her mind slow and heavy as lead, and then she looked up and said in a tone laden with restraint, "I can't tell if I want to frak you or kill you."

"Huh." Dean exhaled, and his green eyes glinted with something that might have been lust, might have been murderous rage. Ever since his little Rip Van Winkle summer vacation in Hell, that could sometimes be a tricky distinction to make. "It's funny," the man went on. "You walked in here, and I started thinking the same thing." He exhaled again. "Trouble is, tempting though both those options might be, I got a feeling that neither is the right answer."

She wanted to beg, she wanted to plead, but Faith Lehane was not a girl who begged or pleaded. It simply was not written into her DNA. "Okay." She pursed her lips. "I'll call Lily in the morning, see if she can slip westwards and pick up the stuff we left behind. She's in between shows at the moment."

The hunter nodded. "Sam and I'll be on our way first thing. I'd like to rendezvous back with Bobby, make sure he's doing okay."

"Right." Faith stood up from her chair, resisting the urge to wrap an arm around her stomach to keep her internal organs from leaking out onto the floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course. As she passed by the hunter, she turned her head to the side. If she looked him full in the face again, Faith was going to either clobber him or kiss him, and she did not want to be responsible for what might happen next.

Half-rising out of his seat, the man said, "Hey."

She hesitated in the doorway, hands curling into fists at her side. "Yeah?"

"I'm real sorry. That this is how it is."

The Slayer sucked air in through her teeth. "Me, too." Her words carried a heavy air of finality. "Trouble is, Dean, saying sorry just ain't good enough."

Without turning around, she stepped into the darkness and fled.

* * *

Unfortunately for Faith, that could not be the end of all things. She tumbled back into bed, angry and restless, and then tossed and turned for hours until finally succumbing to exhaustion. She woke not long after, only a half hour or so shy of the dawn.

After hitting the head with its gleaming marble sink, the Slayer wandered back down to the kitchen, following the sound of familiar voices. She turned the corner to find Spike and Angel glaring each other down over mugs of blood from opposite ends of the generous space, having resurrected their ancient argument of caveman versus astronaut for the ten gazillionth time.

"Wonder Woman," interjected Faith, speaking over top of both of them. She pushed past Angel and began rifling through the fridge and cabinets in search of something to munch on. At length, her canvassing turned up a bag of lime Tostitos and a jar of salsa. She poured the salsa from the narrow-necked jar into a wide-mouthed bowl, ripped open the tortilla chips, and went to town.

The vampires joined her at the table, apparently willing to forego their endless debate in favor of staring at her while she gave a demonstration of cavewoman table manners.

"Interesting talk you had earlier," Spike commented as the Slayer shoveled her fifth chip into her mouth. "With your lumberjack."

She chewed once, twice, then swallowed, too exhausted for any more outrage beyond an incredulous, "What?"

Angel had the good sense to look embarrassed. Spike, never a retiring blossom, did not.

"I was outside, havin' a smoke," he explained. "The window was open. Voices carry, and you birds aren't the only ones with special hearing."

"Great," grumbled Faith caustically. She considered drowning herself in the bowl of salsa before her. It would be preferable to having this conversation.

"We think -" the blond vampire started.

"I don't want to hear it."

"We think you should come back with us," Angel finished for him. "To London."

"London?" Oh. Faith had not been expecting that. She needed a break, and crossing the pond would certainly help create a sense of distanced, but she had already promised . . . "I told Buffy I'd stay here and help her."

The vampires exchanged a significant look. Faith took advantage of the momentary reprieve to scarf down another chip laden with chunks of tomatoes and peppers.

"Think of it this way," ventured Spike, his tone bordering on wheedling. "Who's more fun? Us or Buffy?"

"You," the brunette admitted. Her relationship with Buffy might have been growing easier these last few years, but the answer to that particular question had always been and continued to always be a no brainer.

"Then it's easy," he continued. "Come spend three weeks with us and the Bluebird, and then you can come back and help out the Buff."

Faith surrendered. "Okay."

"Okay?" Angel pressed, wanting to confirm this.

"Okay," the Slayer repeated. "I'll come back with you. It's been too long since I went home."

* * *

**September 17th, 2012, Somewhere Over Western Pennsylvania, 9:17 a.m. EST**

"So where are they?"

"I'm sorry?" Aaron Hotchner glanced up the large puddle of papers spread all across the small lap desk in front of him. Their plane was still two hours out from home, and he was using the familiar monotony of paperwork to organize his thoughts. How was he going to explain any of this to the Section Chief?

It was Spencer who had interrupted his thoughts this time, sliding into the empty seat across from Hotch. He buckled his seatbelt with the air of the perpetually safety-conscious and then leaned forward, waving his hands expressively. "The Winchesters and Faith Lehane. Where do you think they are?"

Hotch's dark eyebrows furrowed. "You think they're all alive, still?" he said mildly, herding the mess of documents into a stack and then tapping them on the lap desk to even out the edges.

"Oh, everyone thinks that," answered Spencer quickly, as if it were obvious. "The question is - who was helping them?"

"Take a look at these." The supervisory agent passed his stack of papers over to the younger man. "Garcia finished putting this list together and faxed it to me at the hotel."

Spencer flicked through the documents at lightning speed, committing the names and faces contained therein to memory. "So . . . known associates . . . Liam, no last name - oh, that was one of her so-called lawyers! Who else?" He continued ripping pages and reading aloud, "Elizabeth Summers . . . Robert Singer . . . Rupert Giles - wait, no, he appears to be dead. Wesley Wyndham Pryce - oh, also dead. We starting with Elizabeth Summers and Robert Singer?"

"Yes," Hotch nodded, glad that Reid was thinking along the same lines as he was. "Exactly. We start with them. And until we have the Winchesters and Lehane back in custody, we _do not stop."_

* * *

**September 17th, 2012, San Francisco, California, ** **10:00 a.m. PT**

Taking her sweet time, the Slayer meandered up from the basement movie theater and outside to the garage. Andrew had stuck his head in, intent on borrowing Daniel's PS4, and informed her that the Winchesters were packing up and getting ready to go. Faith knew that he had ulterior motives (Andrew always had ulterior motives where the Winchesters were concerned), but she thanked him for the heads up and headed outside anyway. The garage doors were opened, and she walked through the cool darkness to the warm heat of the driveway, where a non-Jolly, non-Green Giant was tying his bootlaces.

Faith waited until she was two feet away from him to call out, "Hey, Sam."

Startled, the man glanced up. "Hi, Faith." He finished whipping a lace around a bunny ear and pulled it tight. Sam rose to his feet. "Thank you for coming to get me," he said sincerely.

Before he could get any strange ideas about hugging into his head, the Slayer blurted, "I'm glad you're okay. And I wanted to say I'm sorry." The morning sun was behind his back, and she had to squint a little to make out the hunter's face. "Sorry that what I did drove a wedge between you and your brother. I'm, uh, I'm stepping out for a bit."

"Me, too." He did not pause address the apology business. "Dean's dropping me in Salt Lake on his way to Whitefish."

Faith snorted. "Enjoy the Mormons."

"They're not so bad."

"Tsk. Tsk." The Slayer shook her head. "Such a teetotaler, Sammy."

"Don't call me Sammy." But he smiled at her as he said it, removing any possible sting from his words. "See you around?"

"Yeah, I think so." Faith shifted her weight from foot to foot, glancing around but trying not to look as if she were glancing around.

"He's over there." Sam gestured with one thumb towards the right side of the garage.

She wanted to cringe. "That obvious, huh?"

"Nah." It was Sam's turn to shake his head, making her instantly reflect on the man's need for a haircut. Maybe Daniel had a pair of gardening shears lying around somewhere . . . "He was looking for you earlier, too."

Faith meandered her slow way around the corner of the building and over to find Dean Winchester. It was not as if she was in a hurry. Not at all. She found him half-in, half-out of the backseat of the Dodge Charger that Daniel was loaning the brothers, fiddling with an ice chest. The hunter looked up and slid out of the car as she approached.

"Mornin'," he said easily, all the strain from the night before gone from his voice.

"Mornin'," she replied, once again having to squint against the bright California sun. Faith scratched at the bridge of her nose awkwardly.

"You get breakfast?" asked Dean.

"Yeah." Faith joined him full speed ahead on the 'Pretend Everything's Normal' train. "You?"

The hunter bent over to lift Illyria's black bag, now emptied of controlled substances and filled with a toothbrush and a spare change of clothes. "Nah. Just coffee. Not really hungry."

"Oh," said the Slayer, idly checking out his rear end out of habit.

Noticing her gaze, the man allowed himself a hint of a smirk before sobering again and saying, "About last night -"

"You don't need to -" Faith rushed hurriedly.

He dropped the bag into the Charger's trunk and waved a hand, cutting her off. "I said a lot of crap last night - and I meant most of it - but what I _didn't _say and should have was thank you." Dean closed the trunk with a thud and turned to face her. He spoke quietly so that no one on the front side of the garage could hear them. "Thank you for keeping me from getting us killed." He looked down towards his new boots and then back up at Faith. "I should never have done what I did."

For the first time since waking up disoriented in the back seat of that damn Acadian, the brunette was considering that she might actually believe his apology.

Dean continued, "And thank you for saving Sam. I , uh, I don't think I could have figured out a way to do it without you."

Faith gave him a few seconds to wriggle uncomfortably and then commented, "You're big on the speeches lately, aren't you?"

"Sorry," he apologized.

The Slayer rolled her eyes. "It's okay." Racing to backtrack, she said, "I mean, not _everything_'s okay. The speeches, maybe. But not everything." She leaned on the Dodge, her own new shoes brushing up against the rear wheel well. "I don't want you not to feel bad, because what you did to me _sucked_, but I also don't want you to add this to that turtle shell of guilt and martyrdom that you carry around on your back."

When he shot her a strange look, Faith added, "Don't give me that nonverbal scowly crap. You carry around a ton of crap. And you shouldn't, 'cause it doesn't make you better." It was the woman's turn to look away. "All it does it make you self-destructive as hell."

"Faith -"

"Look, Dean, you're like my _best _friend - but don't you dare tell Angel that. I gotta protect his precious feelings."

Tension broke, and the hunter chuckled.

"This-" she made a nonspecific gesture in the air, referring to the absolute clusterfrak that had been the last few days, "this isn't gonna change that, not in the long run. But before I kick your ass outta this place, I just kinda need to know that this didn't - doesn't - change things for you, either. In the long run."

"I don't think it will," he replied slowly. "Look, I just need a long drive, clear my head, see Bobby, have him chew my ass out and hand it back to me on a platter - that kind of thing."

Faith enjoyed the picture her imagination constructed of the ass-chewing that awaited Dean when he reached Bobby Singer. Particularly if a little bird dropped Bobby a line beforehand about what certain people had been up to lately. "Mmm. Don't forget to - "

"Meet up with Becka and Lily next week to get what we left in the cache," he finished for her. "I got it. They taking your stuff back to Cleveland or mailing it here?"

"Here."

"Right."

They hesitated between the Dodge Charger and the ginormous red barn, the air surprisingly comfortable despite the warm autumn sunlight. Faith pushed off the side of the car. They had done this half a hundred times, and still she felt a certain reluctance, even given her current quietly persistent desire to punch him in the face. It had not gotten easier: saying goodbye, stepping back, walking away, giving him up to the care of his brother and the watchful eyes of whatever guardian spirits the universe had dedicated to supervising Dean Winchester. Especially now that the guardian spirits were down one with the loss of Castiel.

"Well," she began, not quite certain how to finish her sentence. It had been a hell of a week.

For the second time, Dean finished it for her. "Take care of yourself."

"Yep. You, too." They began walking back towards the front of the garage and the others. "Think they believe we're dead?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Probably not, though. Too bad we threw the heads down the river. They could have been useful."

"It was the only thing to do, if we didn't want 'em to regenerate, or whatever it is that Leviathans do."

"Hope you're right. Try to keep your hair out of hotel drains?"

"I always try."

"I'm thinking about not shaving for a while," he offered.

She smiled. "That's one way to go incognito."

And, a tentative peace restored, they strode on to rejoin his brother.

_Fin._


End file.
